Second Chances
by dead witch
Summary: Naruto sends his soul to his 7-year old self to attempt to right the wrongs he couldn't before. The confrontation with Itachi results in world-changing consequences. Better than it sounds. By the author of Rising Star. Updated.
1. Volume 1 Chapter 1

If you're reading this, then you're either a fan of my other fic, Rising Star, and are here cause I asked ya to come, or you're just randomly browsing for a story on your off time. Either way, I appreciate it. Keep on reading for a good time.

I had this idea quite a while ago, but never got around to working on. But finally, after about a year of running through my mind like a plague, here it is. I hope to keep working on this for a long time to come. If I do, it'll be published simultaneously with Rising Star, so readers can enjoy two stories in one sitting. I'm good like that.

Anyway… This story is canon as of the latest chapter of Naruto, which came out August 5th or 6th, depending on which site you go to read it. After that, nope. Totally original. Not that it matters, really… well, you'll see why.

Read and review, please!

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**Chapter 1**

Fires raged all around the small group of dedicated shinobi as they raced through the forest. Many of them were what was once called the "Konoha Eleven," though there were many others in the group—ninja who'd survived the holocaust set upon them, or those who hadn't been there for the attacks when they'd come, and returned after the initial advances, during the next wave that had come.

There were no civilians with them—any and all non-shinobi in the village was already dead and gone. They hadn't stood a chance when the army of Bijuu suddenly showed up one late evening. Even if any were left, none of the fleeing ninja could afford to stop and search. Survival was the most important thing for them. To try to bring someone who couldn't defend themselves, who would slow them down, was nothing short of suicide.

In the midst of the pack, surrounded on all sides by friend and fellow soldiers was Uzumaki Naruto, the host of the Kyuubi. The pain that he'd experienced in the last few hours was the most he'd ever felt in his life. Years before, when he learned that his mentor of three years, Jiraiya of the Sannin, the Toad Sage, had been killed by the one known as Pain—that was when he thought that he'd reached rock bottom. But upon seeing his people, the ones who'd eventually adopted him as their favorite son, mercilessly and helplessly cut down before his eyes, he realized that there were lows that he had never imagined.

The flames were spreading rapidly, illuminating their flight through the trees even in the early morning darkness. The leaves in the canopy above were burning more quickly than the wooden boughs that supported them; a veritable sheet of red and orange was suspended above the party. Branches and twigs fell off the canopy randomly, sending deadly chunks of fire falling on the panicked refugees. Two had fallen to the natural traps, one who'd been flagging in strength already, and one who was missing an eye to a recent injury. None of the others stopped to help. Their pursuers were dead on their trail. For anybody to stop and attempt to help would mean death for the entire group.

Speed was key. At the moment, nobody wasted time trying to fight, or even set a trap. The heat and flame would render one useless in seconds, anyway, and they didn't have the time to waste. They had a single destination in mind, and the timetable to get there was strict. There were only two rules at the moment: "Keep up or die," and "Protect Naruto at all costs."

Rage burned inside of the young man. Had it been ten years before this day, he would have lost control already and begun the transformation into the Kyuubi. But time and training had given him the control he used to lack. There was no chance that he'd go berserk… but a guilty part of his mind wished that he would. That way, he could fight and fight without remorse. He would lose himself in the raw power of the Kyuubi, and fight until he died. That way… that way, he wouldn't feel the shame and guilt that he now had.

_No! _Naruto shouted at himself. _This is not the time! Do what you have to do! Fulfill your mission! _

Above and below, right and left, before and behind, shinobi of all ages and clans and disciplines escorted him to the place he told them that they might have a fighting chance at. They had put all of their trust in him once again. It was for the sake of their future—their _lives—_that they followed him to their possible deaths. Anything was better than this. This wasn't war. This was Armageddon.

Naruto had told them his plan before they fled. Some didn't like it… but most of them supported it. It would require the sacrifice of their safety, probably their very lives before it came to fruition. But if he was right, he had a chance to set things right—make things right. Only he had the power to do this.

They were close—very close. The site that was their target was a nexus of chakra. He'd discovered it while in his Sage mode once. The land there held a massive amount of chakra, and the air was thick with it for those who could sense it. He'd once fought there—the amount of energy he'd drawn on there was comparable to that of his full transformation into the nine-tailed fox.

He needed this site because he couldn't use the fox's chakra with this jutsu. If he could have, he wouldn't involve his party with it. But his own store of chakra wasn't enough—this was the only chance he had.

The only chance any of them had.

They were only seconds away from clearing the forest when the stragglers behind them began being picked off by the swiftest of their enemies. Shuriken, kunai, and several jutsu slammed into the rear guard—just like that, four of his small army were dead.

"Faster!" he shouted at them, urging them on. "Move it or die!"

This seemed to be the motivation they needed. Spurred on by the demise of their comrades, each of them put on an extra burst of speed. Naruto looked up. "Topside! Throw them backwards now!"

Naruto had given each of his soldiers a special pronged kunai with a tag on it—the key to the Hiraishin no Jutsu. In a flash he disappeared, and the frontrunners behind them were dead to the man. He reappeared near the front of the group next to Hyuuga Hinata, who had one of the tags held to the side. He didn't say a word; he didn't have to. She knew she held his thanks already.

Then they were there. A large clearing in the forest spread out a half mile in diameter. The power of the place was palpable to Naruto as he neared its center. Over the years, he'd learned to instantly enter the Sage mode without standing still or using a clone. He'd truly surpassed the Toad Sage himself in his prime.

"We're here!" Naruto shouted as they hit the ground running. "Fall into formation! Reserve positions, take them! Outside perimeter, shore up! Hinata, how long until we get more bogies?"

"Two minutes, Naruto!" she shouted as she took up position six feet from him. Seven others completed the octagon around him. Another ring was formed around that, and another around them. All in all, almost fifty people had dedicated themselves to guarding him for these few crucial moments.

"That's not enough time!" Naruto bellowed.

"We can give you five more than that!" Chouji said. "Just do what you have to do! Deliver on your promise to us and make sure that this is righted!"

Naruto nodded. "Got it! First wall, seal up!" The outer ring each held up a paper tag and activated it. A wall formed there, translucent and strong. They were linked to the chakra of the ones who placed them. Until they removed them—which they would never, ever do—they would maintain the dome that encompassed the remaining shinobi. The only other way to take them out of action was to kill the ones who activated them.

"Now run like hell!" Naruto shouted. "If this doesn't work, I want you to survive! Do whatever you have to do—make sure you don't fucking die on me! Is that clear?"

"Yes sir!" most of them shouted. One held back, though.

"Kiba! Get the fuck out of here!"

Kiba made a face at him. "That's not happening!" he snarled. "If I can hold them off long enough, kill enough of them, I can make sure that the others survive long enough to pull this off!"

"You idiot!" shouted Shikamaru. "You have your orders!"

"Fuck the orders! I'll disobey this time—if we get through all this, bring me in on a fucking court marshal if you want! I'm not gonna run with my tail between my legs!"

"Fine!" Naruto shouted as he pulled scrolls out of every one of his pouches and pockets. "We don't have time to argue. Do what you have to, Kiba, but don't you die on me!"

Kiba nodded. "Got it. Ready, Akamaru?"

Akamaru woofed. Now the size of a small horse, he was the largest of all of the Inuzuka's ninken. Kiba threw a handful of soldier pills into Akamaru's waiting mouth. His fur turned a crimson red and grew into a shaggy coat. The dog jumped at the boy, and in an instant they merged into a monstrous dog the size of a good-sized house, a far step up from when they first used it in combat against the Sound ninja all those years ago. Just the sight of the creature was enough to instill fear into the bravest of warriors.

"What are you waiting for?" Naruto asked the rest of the platoon. "A written invitation? Second wall, get up now! Stand at the ready, I don't know how long he can hold them off!"

The remaining shinobi hurried to obey. Naruto was not one you wanted angry at you in the best of times. The middle ring activated the seals, forming a smaller dome inside the first one.

Naruto began setting up the scrolls. They were on spikes, and with a quick jab he arranged them in a circle around himself. Pulling more out, he made another ring. Double- and triple-checking the arrangement, he sat in the middle, closed his eyes, and with blazing speed flashed through hand signs faster than the human eye could follow. He'd never done this before, he had no idea if it would work—but it had to work. It _had _to. He had to have faith that his months of preparation would lead to success.

The only other option was failure. And that would lead to certain death.

Once commenced, the jutsu could not be halted. The seals written in the scrolls that surrounded him were too unbalanced to allow even a moment's hesitation. They had to be activated in order, in precise intervals. If he didn't get this _exactly _right the first time, they could explode, and barrier or no barrier—they'd all die.

He tuned the outside sounds from his mind. He forced himself to ignore the sounds of combat that raged from Kiba and Akamaru as the next wave of enemy shinobi arrived. Ignored the sound of pained screams as the beast they had become ripped them to shreds with its claws and crushed them in its twin sets of teeth.

He ignored the sound of its roar as it was attacked and ripped to shreds itself.

He said a silent prayer in the back of his mind for the boy and his dog.

One by one, the scrolls began spinning on the spikes they were attached to. First one, then another, with spaces of fifteen seconds between them. It would take four minutes to activate all sixteen scrolls. He needed another three and a half.

He didn't think he would get them.

He heard the screams of shock when the first barrier went down. That could only mean that the twenty-six people who'd ran were all dead. Just like that.

_Mourn later if there is a later! _Naruto screamed to himself. _Focus now!_

The seventeen people who'd made the second barrier sprang into action, Shikamaru, the village's chief tactician leading them. He and Chouji decimated the forces coming at them, Shikamaru with thousands of shadow needles springing up from the ground, Chouji with well-placed fists the size of horse carts. He saw Ino manipulate a half-dozen foes into turning on their comrades—

Until her head was lopped off by a flying Fuma shuriken thrown from a distance none of them could defend against.

"_INO!" _Chouji bellowed in horror as he saw her head fly through the air. In rage, he made his arm reach out to the source of the projectile. He grabbed the shinobi and squeezed him to a pulp, then threw him back into the forest flames.

One of the enemy ninja used a technique to make a sword grow to epic proportions and sliced Chouji's arm off at the elbow. Distracted by the pain, he was an easy target for another shinobi, who issued a bolt of lightning to blow a hole through his armor and destroy his heart. He fell to the ground with a thud, blood flowing onto the ground to make a sticky puddle of mud.

Shikamaru's needles were working overtime. His needles now had a fine edge to them, which he used to slice and saw anyone in his sight, or within reach of his shadow. When a barrage of kunai hit him from behind and penetrated his skull, though, the shadows dissipated. He was the last surviving member of the second defense. The trio known as the InoShikaChou was no more.

That entire conflict took less than two minutes.

The third line had already put up their barrier. Hyuuga Hinata, Haruno Sakura, Rock Lee, Tenten, Sarutobi Konohamaru, Hyuuga Neji, Maito Gai, and Shiranui Genma were all that was left. They sprang into action; Hinata and Neji working together to sweep away shinobi left and right using short and long range Juuken techniques, ripping limbs from the seemingly-endless stream of ninja flying through the flaming treeline.

Tenten sent weapon after weapon at them from under her cloak until there was nothing left, when she grabbed a pair of swords from the ground and got into close range combat.

Lee and Gai went as far as they could go—they both hit the seventh gate without going through the first six, straining their bodies to the max in a sacrifice for speed and physical strength as they punched and kicked anything that moved, forgetting technique and just raining blow after blow on those who would come near them.

Genma worked his signature skill—his hands separated, he created two jutsu at a time, one with each hand. Not bothering to call out the name to help focus, waterfalls and typhoons and a flock of bird-shaped pockets of wind chakra flew at their foes, one after another, wave after wave of ninja being cut down…

But it just wasn't enough.

Gai faltered. In his older age, with a lifetime of using the Lotus, his body failed him for one critical second. He was impaled from behind with a spear. Lee snapped the man's neck, but it was too late—Gai was already dead.

Tenten's swords had become broken sometime in the fight, but she didn't replace them. She just kept on slashing and slashing with the stubs, little longer than kunai, when she too was impaled on an enemy's blade.

Hinata and Neji were becoming exhausted in their movements. The long-range arts of their style used up a massive amount of chakra, and soon, Hinata slumped to the ground. Neji did his best to protect her in her moment of weakness, but a kunai sailing in from his blind spot stuck him in the back of his head. He slumped onto Hinata, who was too weak to push him off. Her throat was slit before she could even think of regaining her feet, and she bled out onto the ground, gurgling pink bubbles from her exposed neck.

Genma and Sakura were fighting back-to-back, the man attacking anything in his field of vision, the woman devastatingly delivering blows to all who dared face her. They were the last two to stand.

An arrow from the cover of fire whizzed at Sakura. She wasn't fast enough to dodge it. It plunged into her chest, through her heart. She was dead before she could activate the seal Tsunade had taught her to use when she was still alive.

Genma looked over his shoulder. In that split-second of concern for the girl, a flying giant kunai took off the top of his head, from the nose on up.

The barrier faltered, then fell.

Everyone was dead, but for him. He was alone.

He needed another minute to complete his jutsu. It was fifty-nine seconds more than he had.

Naruto opened his eyes while still flying through his hand seals. Bodies littered the ground like litter. There was almost no space he could see that wasn't bloodied, save for the area that the barrier had enclosed. Inside, it was pristine as the fallen snow.

No living shinobi was in sight. But that didn't mean that none were left. In desperation, in the faintest hope that he was yet alone, he continued with his hand signs. Another scroll glowed red and spun on its axel. He felt, rather than saw or sensed, a presence… one that had once been as familiar to him as his own, but now was wholly alien.

Sasuke had come.

The man who was now truly the last Uchiha entered the clearing casually, the sword Kusanage over his shoulder as if it was a casual walking stick. It glowed a bright green, giving off a horrifying aura of malice. This, the source of Orochimaru's power, only further enhanced the one who had once been called a prodigy. "I can see why you came to this place," Sasuke said slowly as he meandered to Naruto. "This is a place of great power. With your Sage techniques, you would be almost unstoppable here. Which begs the question… why did you not fight? Here, you could have fairly easily destroyed every one of my soldiers with those clones of yours."

Naruto didn't answer; he merely focused on the task at hand. He squelched the burning rage he held inside him back. He couldn't afford to get distracted, not now. If he did—

If he did, the entire array would blow. Even the gifted Uchiha, for all his speed, wouldn't survive. With a single pause, Naruto could destroy him, erase him from the face of the planet.

Sasuke was right. He could have fought… and he would have probably won.

But this wasn't about fighting. Not anymore. It was about making things right. To do that, he had to finish… an entire world was at stake.

Another scroll spun.

Sasuke frowned. "What in the hell are you trying to do?" Sasuke asked, a note of interest in his voice. "I don't recognize this jutsu." His Mangekyou flared, but they saw nothing that was invisible to the naked eye. He couldn't penetrate the material the scrolls were made of. "Chakra paper? You're actually using chakra paper to make seals? How absurd." He lifted the point of the Grass Cutter to one of the spinning scrolls.

The energy feedback caused the blade to warp for a second, then explode outwards. Thousands of glowing green shards flew every which way, some nearly hitting Naruto. A few pinged off of the scrolls themselves, but the rotation and wards built inside to prevent meddling protected them.

Sasuke himself was thrown back by the concussion. He landed on a pile of his former soldiers, which cushioned the impact. He stood up, then looked at the stump of the sword in his hand. With a casual shrug, he tossed it aside, as if it was a mere blade and had not been one of the most rare and valuable weapons in the world. "That was… unexpected." He advanced once again on Naruto.

Another scroll spun. One more to go.

Sasuke frowned. "Tell me what you are doing, you bastard!" he shouted, finally losing his cool. "What _is this?_" Madness, madness born of years of twisted thoughts and schemes and plans for revenge blazed from the priceless eyes of the Uchiha man. Without a word, his hand glowed blue with electricity. After all this time, the Chidori was still his stand-by technique. "_I don't care!" _he shouted madly. "_Just die!"_

He was grabbed from behind in a full nelson. Sakura held him in her arms, hands locked behind his head as he struggled to free himself. She'd somehow come back to life—Naruto didn't know how, but apparently she had an immortality jutsu to surpass the former Hokage's. She'd become much stronger over the years—her physical strength rivaled that of Rock Lee himself. "Let go, you bitch!" he shouted as he thrashed around.

The power in his hands singed her hair and scorched her face, but she healed herself almost as fast as he hurt her. "Forget it!" she said. "I'm _so _over you, you whiny bastard!" She looked over Sasuke's shoulder as she held on for dear life. "Do it! Do it for everyone! Do it for me!"

Naruto looked her in the eyes as the last scroll began to glow and spin. There were so many things he hadn't yet said to her—so much time that they'd spent together over the years that he'd wasted—he didn't know what to do. "Sakura!" he bellowed, the jutsu he'd spent so much time and energy creating and mastering finally activating. "Sakura, I love you! I always have and I always will!"

Sakura smiled painfully as she held onto the bucking man in her arms. "I know," she said. "I love you too… Hokage-sama."

The scrolls began unraveling around Naruto to cocoon him, first the ones closest to him, then the ones on the outer ring. The inner circle designated time—the second, space.

It was the world's most powerful and most dangerous teleportation jutsu.

The instant before he was swept from this plane of existence, he saw Sasuke break free from Sakura and lop her head off with his Chidori and charge at him with the same motion.

As fast as Sasuke was, he wasn't fast enough. Naruto disappeared, into thin air.

He was gone.

And then… So was Sasuke, and the bodies around him, and the whole world around _him. _They'd never existed, at all.

And they never would.

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Yup, that's it. This is just a sampler chapter. If people seem to like it, I'll write more. If not, I'll think of something else to write.

This chapter was written in about four hours, a couple of which were done while watching Discovery Channel. Make of that what you will.

If you like this, tell me! Please review!

dead witch


	2. Volume 1 Chapter 2

A/N: Well, here it is: the second chapter of Second Chance. I'm going to publish this a few days before I get Rising Star chapter 23, mainly because I couldn't stop writing this long enough to get any work done on it at all. I hope you enjoy the show… I had a blast writing it.

I've gotten a lot of support for this fic, with nary a foul word thrown my way. Someone said that every paragraph was used effectively in the first chapter, and I try to be as efficient as possible. It's what I think I do best of all… say what I have to say without drawing things out too much.

This is a unique fic in several ways, which you will see once you scroll down and get into the meat of it. I don't know if anything quite like this has ever been done before—if so, please let me know so I can read it and not make copies in error. I don't want to be accused of plagurizing someone else's work. That being said, I've made some references to other stories, and outright quoted another fic—one of my favorites of all time on this site, by the title of "Silver Fox." If you haven't read it, you should. It's quite good. If the author of that story gets mad at me, I will completely understand and rewrite that segment, but unless otherwise asked I will keep it there.

Ok, enough of that. Read on, and enjoy! Please, read and review!

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**Chapter 2**

It was a curious sensation to know that the man you'd once been had never existed anymore. Because Naruto could think that thought, he knew that he'd succeeded. His consciousness floated in a void without form, without definition. There was no way to know which way was up, which way was down. He didn't know if he was falling somewhere, or rushing up, or simply staying in one place. There was nowhere _to, _in the simplest sense of the word.

He couldn't see, couldn't hear, nor feel a thing. He realized that he no longer had a body to do any of those things anymore. It had been destroyed—along with reality as he knew it—upon the completion of the jutsu. _Hmm… _he thought to himself. _This could be a problem._

He knew exactly where…but not _when… _he was. Try as he might, he hadn't found a way to move his body to the time and place that he'd wanted. Physics wouldn't allow it. Energy and matter were, essentially, the same thing. But matter couldn't be turned into energy and back again. That was what he'd experimented with before, with disastrous results. So, he had tried a different tack; remove his soul and send it into the stream of reality itself to travel to the point he desired.

Therein lied another flaw—destination. How could he pinpoint the exact moment in his past that he needed to go to? Every expert on the theory told him that it was impossible. With the technology that was available, even with the most complex space-time jutsu he'd known, there was no way to do so. Traveling in time was, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

But Uzumaki Naruto had made a career of defying the impossible, and he wasn't going to let it stop him this time.

The scrolls had played a key part in his purposes. As each one had activated, they'd each taken a portion of his soul and stored it inside. Once each had been triggered, they simultaneously sent it to another plane of reality—somewhere between the fourth and fifth dimension, neither of which human perception could grab hold of. Thus, his soul had been shattered and transformed into fragments of energy and shifted onto a higher plane, where they had been collected and reassembled.

Naruto had no idea beforehand if it would work. He knew, in _theory, _that what he was doing was possible. He'd run the scenario in his head a thousand times. But there was always room for mistakes—mistakes that would be all too easy to make with the distractions of a full-scale battle going on around him.

His soul was safe for the moment, but he didn't know for how long. He had no idea of what the effects of merging one's soul with a plane of energy was, but he wasn't eager to find out for the long-term. Time wasn't a standard thing, not here. Here _was _time.

If he'd had lungs, Naruto would have taken a deep breath. He realized the irony that he was starting to panic without senses. _Calm down, calm down, _he said as he mentally hyperventilated. _You know what to do._

And indeed, he _did _know what to do. He began imagining his body, in all its dimensions. Slowly—it seemed slow, anyway, without a point of reference—his body formed, from its head to its toes. Finally, Naruto could see… little good that did him.

Floating in a void was just that—a _void. _To call it grey would insult grey. There was nothing, nothing at all. To do what he needed to do, though, that couldn't be.

_If I'm a part of this realm, _Naruto thought, _and I can make a body… perhaps I can form something I can see? _It was a curious idea, but one that he thought might work. He concentrated on the vast nothingness around him for a moment…

Suddenly, there was a dazzling array of color all around him. There was still no basis for up and down, but at least there was _something. _He saw lines made of rainbow-hued strands all over the place, connected, sometimes, by miniscule points where they came together and diverged. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the pattern, but for they all seemed to come from a single source.

This was no what he'd had in mind. He'd hoped that he could resonate with the space around him to create some sort of book that would let him figure out where to go. Time, it seemed, did not make intend to make things easy for him. If time, as some had thought back on his own world, was an actual thing, and not just a concept, then it stood to reason that there was no reason that it couldn't have its own sort of consciousness.

Naruto's eyes struggled to make sense of the strands all about him. If he was right—and the space around him resonated with his soul—then these lines just might represent points in his life, or perhaps the possibilities.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? Time, space—it was all relative. Time couldn't exist without space, and vice-versa. One defined the other.

Time, it seemed, decided to show Naruto the most critical points in his multitude of possible lives. The lines—both short and long—seemed to represent time spent between "turning points," or times of important decisions or change.

The most difficult part of all of this was finding his own timeline. He had no idea which one of the thousands upon thousands of strands he saw was his own. How to choose?

And more importantly—what to do next?

Naruto thought for a moment while floating listlessly in the midst of all of this. _The instant that I arrived here, _he thought slowly—or quickly—_reality as I knew it ceased to exist. That must mean that I will successfully find my own line… I _will _go into the past and make sure that it never happened. The question is… how do I do that?_

Naruto began to take a closer look at some of the lines before him. There was no real measure of distance in this void, but he could tell that some of the apparitions were closer to him than others. With a measure of effort, he told his body to move closer to one of the lines… and slowly, slowly, it got somewhat closer to him, until, with some experimentation, he found he could wrap a hand around the straight neon-green cord without touching it.

He looked at the point where two lines branched off to form separate realities. _Ah, I see, _he thought calmly. _This isn't one timeline. This is a section broken off into possible futures… futures that share equal validity. The question is, which one is the true one, and which is but the illusionary possibility?_

He focused his gaze on the point of intersection. To his amazement, the lines weren't actually connected to the angle; instead, they were held off, just a tiny bit—what Naruto would call a millimeter. But distance in this world meant little.

He considered his options for a moment. He knew that his body was nothing more than a construct formed by his consciousness, from the same… whatever it was that surrounded him. If his mass truly was only organized time, what would happen if he touched a line? Or, for that matter, a turning point in existence?

He had to take the chance. He had no other choice. This wasn't exactly pioneered territory. He'd risked his life getting here—getting out was something altogether.

Without another thought, he extended his right index finger and touched the node at the divide—

_He was Naruto, but not a Naruto that he knew. He was a shinobi, and had spent much of his young life attacked and beaten by the villagers of Konoha, all the while screaming that he was a monster and should have died long ago. After running from the village, a man named Zabuza had found him and raised him with a girl named Haku. They'd fallen in love many years beforehand an, with the death of their master, finished the coup that he'd planned years before and assassinated the Yondaime Mizukage, who'd been the host of the Sanbi. Naruto was now the Mizukage and on hostile terms with Fire country, but there was not yet a war—though there would soon be one, most likely._

Naruto pulled his finger away in a rush before he could learn much more than that. For just an instant, it was as if—as if he _was _that version of Naruto. He'd known everything he had known… and for the briefest of moments, he'd felt himself drawn into that world.

This was not the world that he was looking for, not even close. For one, in his reality, Haku was a male. They'd fought on what was to be named the Great Naruto Bridge… and he'd died by Kakashi's hand, defending Zabuza. He remembered that day quite well.

_So, this is how it works… if I touch these lines, or points, I'll learn whatever I can from this world. But I felt myself becoming sucked into it, as well. Maybe, if I hold on too long, I'll go to that world?_

_But as _what? he wondered. _A phantom? A ghost?_

He shook his head. No, that wasn't the deal. He'd felt his very soul settling into the body of the man he would have become there. If he hadn't stopped himself, he very well could have gone into it… maybe even destroying the very soul there.

There was no way that he was going to let himself into that reality. It was nothing like what his past had been. If he was going to find his past—his _true _past—there was only one option. Find the point where all of these vast possibilities began, the day of his birth, and weed them out from there.

He looked the opposite way from which the lines forked. The brilliant hues of the lines and nodes flashed all around him, but as they grouped together towards the origin point in the distance, thought the amounts of lined diminished as the possibilities grew fewer and fewer as they approached the point of his birth, they were clustered much more tightly together. In fact, they were so packed in, there was no way that he could see to even touch these lines individually, much less find his own.

But he had to try. With a force of will, he made his body move, flying and weaving in between the lines and points in an extreme effort not to touch any of them. Red, blue, green, colors he could not describe… they all passed by him as he advanced onward.

Finally, he could not move any further forward. The lines compressed too tightly before him, even if he narrowed into the smallest shape he could. He looked left, right, up, down—but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere at all. With a sigh, he realized that he would have to go back the way he had come and rethink his approach.

He looked behind him in horror. Somehow, the lines had closed in behind him as he moved. Now, there was no way that he could go anywhere… anywhere at all.

He was trapped. In time itself.

_Shit! _he screamed at himself. _How could I let this happen? Why didn't I keep track? _He looked at each of the multi-colored lines around his head. _Is one of these _my _timeline? If so, which one? How can I tell? _He thought about touching one at random. Just as he was beginning to move a hand to do so, a voice from behind him startled the shit out of him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a posh voice said smoothly. Naruto jerked, forcing an elbow to bump into a line—

_A three-year-old boy with bright blonde hair that looked smudged with dirt, bright blue eyes, three whisker marks on each cheek, a ragged white shirt and black shorts that looked tight on him was running away from an angry mob of villagers. The boy was Naruto Uzumaki of the Hidden Leaf Village, the strongest village of the Shinobi Hidden Villages, and Elemental Nations. Naruto ran from the villagers desperately trying to get away from them as they shouted their insults, "Demon Brat!" "Get back here Demon!" "We'll finish what the Fourth started!" Naruto ran into an alley as a desperate attempt only to come face to face with a brick wall. Naruto turned around pressing himself against the wall sliding into a corner in a fetal position. "Please don't hurt me!" cried Naruto with tears falling down his face. The villagers surrounded him when a ANBU appeared. He had spiky silver hair, a dark blue mask covering his face, black pants, ANBU tattoo on his right arm, ANBU armor, with a tiger mask._

_Naruto looked up and felt relieved. The ANBU looked at Naruto, and then looked at the mob, "What do you think you're doing?" The mob looked at the ANBU with fear in their eyes, thinking he was going to kill them. The ANBU turned around grabbing Naruto by the throat choking the poor boy. "The boy can easily tell the Hokage on all of you. So it's best to cut those vocal cords of his—"_

The man's hand gently pulled Naruto's elbow from the line before he could remember any more than that. "That," he said softly, "is a world that is not meant for you. It has a happy ending, to be sure… but for now, that boy knows nothing but pain and fear. He will go through years of hardship before he can be completely happy. No, no… your way lies over there." He pointed a long, thin finger towards a golden line that was thicker than most of the others. "Yes, there. This is a branch of the line that is a significant part of the central Nexus."

Naruto looked at the man. He wore a suit with a long coat over it, open at the front, with a subdued tie down the pressed white shirt. A top hat adorned his head, and a cane was clutched in his gloved left hand. Who was this guy? How was he here?

The man smiled. "My name is… well, truth be told, I don't have a proper name. But for simplicities sake, you can call me 'Winston.' As to why I'm here, this is where I, for lack of a better term for it, live."

Naruto's mouth opened gap jawed. Had he read his mind?

Winston laughed. "No, young one," he said with a smile. "I did not read your mind. And no, before you ask, I am not predicting your future." He frowned. "Not on purpose, at least, I can assure you. It happens accidentally here, as you can imagine. This realm can be _so _vexing at times."

Naruto shook his head. "What's going on?" he asked, somehow surprised that he could talk without air. "Really, who are you? What's going on?"

Winston sighed. "What is going on is, you have stumbled some place that you really have no business being. Ever. You see, Naruto, as you probably already realize, you are in what is often called 'the fourth dimension', or more simply, _time. _This is a place that exists outside of the rules of matter and space, though one cannot exist without any of the others. By being here, and making your body, and creating this dandy little construct that lets you see your multitude of lives—and, I must say, very few in all of reality have had as many distinct possibilities as you—you threaten to bring order to a place that cannot afford order. It is my job to give you the boot, as it were."

"Give me… the boot? You're going to kick me out?" Horror crept to Naruto. This was not what he'd sacrificed everything for… risked so much for… he wouldn't let this man, whoever the hell he was, stand in the way of his goals.

"Your ideals are admirable," Winston said, once again knowing somehow what was going on inside of Naruto's head, "but futile. I see the wards set around your soul. Brilliant as they are, they, along with the essence that is _you, _are now a part of this space. I could snap them like foil paper." He smiled. "But I won't. To be more precise… I can't."

This was way, way over the young man's head. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "If I can't stay… and you can't destroy me…"

"Don't get any ideas," Winston said. "You won't be staying long, as you know it. For the moment, you are but an amusement."

"And cats use mice for amusement," Naruto said with a growl. "But the question is, are you gonna swat me around, or put me out of my misery?"

Winston laughed. "My, my, the spirit he has!" he said. "So many of your fellows are such dreary lads! No, boy, no! I'm not going to do any of these horrid things! No, by amusement, all I mean is that it gets so lonely here. With a few exceptions, it is nice to have some company for a bit."

"Company?" Naruto asked. "Do you often get people coming here?"

Winston sighed. "Not as often as I'd like," he said. "Usually, people are just passing through. And by people… well, that's a pretty loose definition. A few times, it was this surely lion who had this high-and-mighty attitude. In his realm, he was king. In another realm, he was a children's story."

Naruto was beginning to become confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Winston sighed. "Of course," he said sadly. "You don't know… It matters not. The point is, various people, for various reasons, come here, or pass through here. You are but one of many. Why, I have even seen some variations of you at times. Oh, yes, there has been need for 'you' to travel the timestream as well. Most of them were similar to you… smart and desperate. Most of them, though, had a more streamlined technique to pass through my little kingdom, without a need to stop and stay a while."

Naruto closed his eyes. Great. He was dumber than his counterparts.

"No, not at all!" Winston said. He held glove-tipped fingers to his mouth. "Oops," he said. "Sorry. I promise I'll try not to let it happen again."

Naruto cocked an eyebrow. "How are you doing that, anyway?" he asked.

Winston smile pleasantly. "Child," he said, "and please, when you are as old as me, you can call even the eldest of deities, save for one or two, child. "Child, your body is a construct of time itself. I am master of time. Everything that runs through your head, also runs through me. I am omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Without me, nothing—_nothing—_exists. One, perhaps two gods live outside of time. But without me? The universe in all its glory will do a bunk. In any case, that is not important. What _is, _though, is what, exactly, to do with you?" He held the knuckles of a closed fist to his chin, his other arm crossed under it. "What to do with you…"

Naruto gulped. If he was as powerful as he had said he was…

"And I am."

…he could do anything that he wanted. Including…

Winston shook his head sharply. "No. Don't even think about it. It's not happening." He sliced his velveteen fingers across his throat. "Forget it, kid," he said. "I will not send you into the past like that to stop Sasuke from leaving you. That's how it was meant to be. Each of you are free to make your own choices. Unfortunately for him, his decisions were that of a prat."

"But you can—"

"I can do many, many things," he said. "Extremely few of which I have the inclination or, forgive me, the _time _to do. You saw how many variables there were for you, and you alone. I have the responsibility for monitoring _all aspects of existence. _Including the ones that _don't exist yet. _I have little time to play around and mess up time as we know it."

"But here you are," Naruto pointed out.

Winston waved a hand, as if brushing a fly away. "Bah," he said. "This is merely the smallest fraction of my total that I could manifest to you and you not go insane. And even at that, I am slightly stretched. For instance…" he eyed the lines around Naruto's head. "This is good. Good visualization. You knew what you were doing when you came here. And therein lies the problem."

Naruto frowned. "What problem?"

Winston sighed. "The problem is," he said, "just what to do with you right now. I can't just leave you here… but I can't send you back, either. By coming here, you've destroyed your time."He suddenly frowned. "No, that's not it. You made it cease to be. God damn it, you actually did go back—or you will—bah, grammar is so difficult when speaking of time paradoxes. Paradoxi?"

Naruto grinned. So he _did—_or _will—_succeed. "This is good, right?"

Time frowned. "No," he said. "Not really. Not at all. Time is separate from fate. And I do _hate _it when my hand is forced. Every time someone successfully leaps through the timestream, I have to work to keep everything in balance. It is tedious work, even for one as unbound as me. Travel though this world rips minute holes, pinpricks in the vast quilt of reality. Still, it is troublesome."

"But still… I make it. I'm sorry for the trouble I've caused you, really," Naruto said. "But you said it yourself. I _do _make it to my destination, in the end."

Winston thought for a moment. "Not…quite. No. You see, your intention was to find yourself at the point in time where you lost the boy, Sasuke, to the snake man, correct?"

Naruto nodded. "Yes," he said. "That's when he… when he changed."

A sad smile came to Winston's face. "Really now… is that what you truly believe, young man?"

Naruto cocked an eye. "Yes," he said. "If he hadn't have gone to Orochimaru, everything would have been different."

"Really, now?" Winston's question put Naruto on edge. "Do you really believe that he was… shall we say… totally stable before that? That he was, at any point, anything approaching level?"

"That's not fair!" Naruto shouted. "Yeah, he had his moments—he was hot-headed, and could be an ass, sometimes—but he genuinely cared for me! He was my friend!"

Winston looked up. "Boy," he said wearily. "Until you graduated from school, you _despised _him. You were weaker than him in every way. And believe me… he hated weakness. It wasn't until you got proper tutelage and grew into your skills that he began to respect you. Eventually, yes—he became your friend. Your surrogate brother, perhaps, even. But you only really knew him for the boy he was for less than a year in your time. Before that, he had four years of torture to twist his mind. No, going back to when he betrayed you and yours is not the answer you seek."

Naruto crossed his arms. "Then, what the hell is?" he asked.

Winston smirked. "To solve a problem," he said, "you must go directly to the source. Tell me, child—you have all of your turning points. You can see them all around you, in all their glory. And, by the way—it would take an _exceptionally _strong mind to manifest a body here, same with the timelines here. Congratulations on that. But tell me… what was the most major turning point for your young Uchiha friend?"

Naruto frowned. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

Winston sighed. "What is," he said, "the most important event in his life?"

Realization dawned on Naruto. "The massacre… of his clan," he said softly.

The man nodded. "True," he said. "Very true. In fact, that genocide can be responsible for many of these deviations you see before you. Had that not happened, your life would have been much more simple. You see, one way or another, your destinies are extremely intertwined. To accomplish your goals, you must go to the root of the disease, and shear it."

"Disease? _Shear? _You talk as if this is just some tree you have to prune! I'm talking about setting things right!"

"Right? For whom? Young man, everyone that you want to set this right for is now no longer in existence. You've killed them all. Not just them, but the entire space of reality no longer _exists. _No, you're doing this to satisfy your own sense of justice… and revenge. You can put all the pretty words you want in front of it, but in the end… all you are doing is throwing a galaxy-sized temper tantrum. And, as with most tantrums, things will get broken before they settle down.

"You, boy, will break things. Many, many precious things, before this is all over. And you must live with it."

Naruto frowned. "Just what in the hell are you talking about?"

Winston swept a hand to the side, causing every one of the lines, but for his own main line, to disappear. "Come, boy. I will show you, if you like." The line grew slowly, as if filling up with matter from within and expanded to compensate. "This, right here," he said, pointing to a position in the middle of a segment of line, "this is exactly when the ones you call Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Madara kill their family. Now, you will notice that this is in between turning points for you. Nothing eventful happens for you right here, or for a few years before or after. But this is the most important of the smaller branches, for it is where most of your future realities come from. The others are, of course, of little consequence. But this one… yes. It is from this line that the one who is the keystone Uzumaki Naruto comes from. And no, before you ask… you are not the keystone."

"What is this… keystone?" Naruto asked.

"Simply put, so simply that even _you _can understand," Winston said, "the 'keystone' is the one single being of all possible beings that hold reality as you know it together. He is what we could call the 'real' Uzumaki Naruto. Without him… you would fade into nothingness."

Naruto shivered. "But I'm as real as he is!" he said.

Winston eyed him. "Are you sure about that?"

Naruto nodded hesitantly. "Of course. If I wasn't real… then I wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be having this conversation. You wouldn't be frustrated by being forced to help me."

"That is one way to put it," Winston said, agreeing. "Yes, you are real. But see here…" With a swish of his hand, the line began zooming by. As it passed, various branched faded into nothingness. "Here," he said, pointing at a spot at the end of a line. "This is the end of the line for the keystone Naruto."

Naruto frowned. "This line isn't nearly as long as a lot of the others," he said.

Winston smiled. "Of course not," he said. "He is only nineteen years old right now. Time passes differently for each branch, you see. What could take you a year might take him two. But that's not to say that he experiences two years for your one. It just means that you timestream moves along somewhat more quickly than his. You're what—twenty-four to his nineteen? All that means is that you've moved along at a good clip. You're to be commended."

"But what does this mean to me?" Naruto asked. "Keystone or not, what does this have to do with me?"

Winston sighed. "It means _everything, _boy." With another wave of his hand, the line went back to where it had been before—the time in his life of the Uchiha slaughter. "This is the critical turning point for many people. For your friend, for his brother…from their forbearer. Multitudes of events happen after this. It is dangerous beyond reason to insert you here and let you run amok."

"But… you could," Naruto said slowly.

The man nodded. "I could. I very well could."

"And… what would it take to get me there?" Naruto asked. "What do I have to do to prevent this?"

Winston studied Naruto thoroughly. "There is nothing that you, by yourself, can do. But what must _I _do to make this safe for all of reality is bothersome." He slowly stretched an arm and cast it aside, bringing a segment of line before Naruto. "You," he continued, "split from here, the keystone Naruto, at age eighteen. At the moment, in his reality, he is only sixteen, though that is splitting hairs. Time is difficult to measure as such.

"It could be argued, too, that you _used _to be the keystone Naruto, but no longer are. Nifty… but not important. What _is _important, though… If I put you where and when you want to be, that timeline could be in danger of collapse. If it does, then everything—and I mean _everything—_after that will fall like dominoes. The temporal shockwave will result in a backlash as soon as it hits the end of your universe's time… then it'll go back, back, all the way to the formation of your universe. To be fair, by the way I judge things, your universe is only about ten years old or so. Not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But you'll still cease to exist."

Naruto gulped once again. "It's that bad, huh?" he asked softly.

"No," said Winston. "It's worse. I'm just watering it down for you a little. No need to give you the _whole _ugly truth."

"Thanks," Naruto said sarcastically.

"Welcome," the man said without missing a beat. "But the simple fact of the matter is, I _do _help you. And I _do _place you when you want to be. And it is one of the most idiotic decisions I will have had the misfortune to make."

"Why misfortunate?" Naruto asked. "What could go wrong?"

Winston smiled. "More than you could know. But I have a plan." He poked a finger at the line. He actually _plunged_ a finger into it, and slowly, ever so slowly, withdrew it. A bar of gold followed his fingertip, extending until it was about an inch long.

"What are you doing?"

Winston smiled. "Maintaining the balance," he said. "This is an entirely new branch for you. If you go here, you can do what you set out to do: create a new future for you and your loved ones. The difference is, these won't be the people you know… not exactly. If you succeed—and that's a big _if—_then you won't muddle the timestream as it is now. Furthermore, this line will not branch, at all. You have one shot to get this right. If you do, you live your life as you wish. If not, you will most likely die soon enough"

Naruto thought for a moment. "But… you _know _if I'll succeed or fail," he said.

Winston smiled. "Of course I do," he said. "I always have. But telling you won't be any fun, now, would it? If I told you that you would succeed, then you might get cocky. If I told you that you would fail, then you wouldn't try."

Naruto scowled. "I don't have too much choice here, do I?"

Winston shook his head. "Of course you do," he said. "You can take my offer… or I can destroy you, here and now. You wouldn't die, of course. You would cease to exist. Poof, gone."

Naruto sighed. "Damn. This isn't turning out how I thought it would."

The man smiled. "Things rarely do," he said. "But, hey—look on the bright side. Not very many people get a second chance. This is rare enough amongst the cosmos. Somebody up there—and I do _not _speak figuratively, boy—must love you.

"I must tell you now, though: there will not be another chance for you. This is it. There will be no more opportunities to right your wrongs. Like the vast majority of beings, you must now live with the choices that you make. You will never again be allowed to travel here. Can you accept these terms?"

Naruto steeled himself for his response. "I do," he said with a clenched jaw. "Let's… let's get this over with."

Winston laughed. "No need to be so tense!" he said jovially. "Come, come now! Lighten up! You are going on a great adventure! Now, relax… breath…" He grabbed Naruto's arm gently and made his hand approach the new line. "And whatever you do—try to have some fun along the way."

Naruto's hand touched the line. The body that he'd formed for himself faded, going from solidity to translucency in mere seconds, then was no more. He was gone from this realm, into the world that had been created for him.

He was gone.

Winston floated there amongst the lines for a moment, seeming in contemplation. "Well, now," he said softly. "This is most… _interesting._" He looked up and slightly to the right, as if staring at something—or someone-unseen. "I wonder… what will happen next?"

He faded away, as if he'd never been there.

He never had been.

* * *

A/N: Wow. That didn't come out _exactly _the way I thought it would. Bet none of you saw that coming, though, did you? I'll give some bonus points if you can figure out _half _of everything up there. Man, I couldn't. It's like my brain went haywire halfway through. I swear, I heard in my head "Danger, Will Robinson!" a dozen times in my brain while writing.

It's almost one o'clock in the morning here, and I have to go to school tomorrow, so I'll try to be brief here. This is what is called a "meta story", or a story that incorporates aspects of other tales. The collected works of Stephen King are one such story set. Seriously, most of his books tie in somehow or other with his Dark Tower magnum opus. This isn't _exactly _my long-term intention, but you have to admit—this is some pretty cool stuff.

Anyway, I'm tired, I'm cranky, and my fingers are cramping. Review, whether or not you liked this. Or sharks will eat your ramen before you can.

dead witch


	3. Volume 1 Chapter 3

Well… this is interesting. I'm writing three stories right now—working on the third at the moment, planning on publishing it next week or the week after—and I'm pretty dang busy. But I'm having way, _way _too much fun doing this to stop!

Second Chances has been a wild ride so far, and I'm finding myself liking it. This is a completely different kind of story than Rising Star… I gotta say, I'm enjoying myself just as much here as there.

I only plan for this fiction to go to about a hundred k words. That's probably fifteen chapters or so; if it goes over that, though, no worries.

I know most of you aren't reading this anyway, and have skipped straight to the story. Well, I can't blame ya. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 3**

_Falling… _

_Falling…_

_Falling…_

That was what it felt like, the last thing he felt, before the world around him went black.

No… not _black. _He was still alive… so to speak. He still existed. Nothing was black. It was just _dark. _

Naruto opened his eyes, without realizing that he'd shut them.

_Wait a second… I _didn't _shut them. I didn't have any eyes to shut!_

Though not true black, it was dark to the point where Naruto could not see. He was laying down, with a blanket over his chest, so he knew that it was night. He remembered that his apartment faced an alley, and never got any streetlight.

_Is this… is this really it? _he asked himself. _Is this really happening to me? _He sat up, the blanket falling from him, and swung his legs out over his bed. He attempted to stand on the floor, but fell over—his legs were far too short to reach it.

He landed on one knee, but expertly broke his fall with his hands and sprang up. Though it had been many, many years since he'd lived in this room, he still remembered perfectly where everything was. He'd gone to this apartment nearly every night while not on missions… and had spent much of his time there when not in school, back when he was still a rambunctious youth.

He carefully walked across the floor to where he knew the light switch was. He reached up—much higher than he remembered it was!—and flipped it.

The incandescent bulb in his ceiling sparked to life instantly. With a quick glance around, he took in all that was in his room: his bed, the poster with the Leaf symbol above it, his dresser, a pile of dirty clothes, his shoes, and on top of the dresser a small set of shuriken and kunai, given to him long ago to practice with, because he was in the academy and needed all the training he could get.

Besides that, there was nothing there. He remembered how empty it felt at times, before he began going on missions with his team and could afford more than what the pittance he got from the Hokage brought him.

He walked into the small bathroom that came with his apartment. With a wry smile, he realized that he could only just look over the sink into the mirror. _Come on! _he said to himself. _This is ridiculous! _

He saw… himself. He couldn't believe it, but… there he was. An eight-year-old version of himself, in the flesh. He brought a hand to his face, and traced the whisker-shaped marks on his cheeks. Though they had faded over time, they never completely went away. They were a legacy of his heritage… from his mother, the former jinchūriki of the Kyuubi. Because she'd been pregnant with him while a host, he'd been the perfect receptacle of the beast. He was already attuned to it.

But that wasn't important right now. For the moment, the fox was still firmly locked away. The seal on his belly was still strong, as strong as the day his father had placed it onto him. Until he became enraged enough to crack it… or until he himself, consciously, removed some of the safeguards, as he'd learned to do in his years after mastering the demonic chakra, the fox was safely sealed safely away.

_It's probably better that way, _Naruto thought pensively. _At least for the moment. But, eventually… I'll release it. I know the secrets to it now… I am much more prepared now than I was then. I won't be making the same mistakes again._

He left the bathroom and glanced at the analogue clock on the wall. According to it, it was almost three in the morning. Naruto frowned. He didn't know what day it was… and that was the most important thing to him.

The being composed of time itself… he who called himself Winston… had sent him to a parallel timeline _exactly _identical to his own past. For all intents and purposes, it _was _his past. But it wasn't.

But it was.

He sighed. He'd needed headache medication by the bottle while making the jutsu that had enabled him to do what he'd done… thinking about time travel was just torturous in of itself. He'd known that he wouldn't be erasing the past, or the present, merely reshaping the wheels of time. There was no need to think about such abstract concepts such as _time _anymore, at least not on the cosmic scale.

He was here and now. That was all that was important.

First order of business: find the date. That was the most important thing. He pulled drawers open to put on a shirt and switched his pajama shorts with a pair of bright orange trousers. He smiled briefly; he remembered falling in love with this color at an early age, and it had somehow stuck with him into adulthood.

After finding his frog-shaped wallet and putting his sandaru on, he briefly considered taking his shuriken and kunai with him. He decided against it—there was no immediate threat to him this night.

He found his key, stuck it in his pocket, and leapt out of the window, flowing chakra into his legs to enhance the jump. He frowned as he sailed—his young body was not yet used to manipulating chakra like this. If he remembered right, he'd barely started learning the Henge, one of the simplest techniques in any shinobi's arsenal.

That was going to have to change, and quickly. He had all the knowledge and experience of a short lifetime of combat, of being the Hokage himself, but unless he trained his as-of-yet unscarred and untested body, and quickly, he would be little good.

A small grin came to his face, though, as he bounded off of a nearby rooftop and onto another, making his way to the main marketplace. If his natural chakra control remained the same, and he built this body's chakra reserves up… imagine the surprise on someone's face if they saw him doing the freaking _Rasenshuriken! _

After a moment, he landed in front of an all-night convenience store. He woke a startled clerk who was in his early teens and asked for the latest edition of the village's newspaper, appropriately called the "Loose Leaf."

After paying for it, he walked outside to read the headlines in the streetlight. Thankfully, there was nothing at all about any Uchiha Massacre. "Council Signs Bill Into Law Regulating Weapon Sales To Minors" was the biggest byline. Naruto breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the date—if this was today's edition, he had three days yet to prepare for what he'd come to do.

He was thankful for this short, yet necessary, grace period. He knew that it was no accident—time _wouldn't _put him anywhere he didn't want to. Or… any _when, _for that matter. Winston had shown some magnanimity to the young—well, _newly _young—time traveler.

He bounded across the roof tops back toward his apartment. Though not at all tired, it wouldn't do for a patrolling ninja to find him out this late at night. Though he knew he could handle himself without worry, he didn't want to be stopped. Even now, many shinobi who'd known of him seven years ago, who'd been active during then, wouldn't think too highly of him. He intended to keep a low profile for as long as possible.

When he got home, he took another look at the paper still clutched in his hands. _Three days… three days to change the world. I better get started, then.

* * *

_

He didn't go to sleep that night; instead, he immediately broke into an exercise program he'd had his students do countless times when he'd become Jounin and he wanted them to work on their own physical strength—without the aid of chakra, he stood on his hands and did vertical pushups.

He went on with this for over an hour, without stopping, without counting. He went on until his arms burned with fire, then when he felt he could no longer go on, he stopped and jumped to his feet. He swung them around and around, letting the blood flow to the numbed extremities. Once he had feeling in his fingers again, he sat down and began to go through a number of sets of curling abdominal workouts.

If he'd tapped into his burgeoning chakra, none of this would have been a problem at all. But if he had, there would be no muscular progress at _all. _The main focus was to strengthen his body, not get the work itself done. He needed, more than anything else, to feel the _burn. _When you feel good when working out, nothing was happening. But when you end up sore, pained, with fire in your limbs… that was progress.

When he was done with his crunches, he melted into a puddle and glanced at the clock. It was now just past six in the morning. He looked out the window to see a ray of sunshine streaking onto his bed. How had he missed that?

He shook his head as he stood up, his body protesting at the movement. His stomach felt as if it had been repeatedly punched in the gut with a ham. A very, very _angry _ham.

But he knew that that only meant that he'd begun the long process of strengthening his body. That was something that he knew would be important in this new life.

He sighed as he went to the window and looked outside. If he was gonna do this… spend the rest of his life reliving everything he'd gone through, and change what he could for the better… he would have to blend in. With a wry smile, he realized that he'd have to go back to the Academy.

He remembered what he'd been like at that age… a young boy, ostracized by most of the rest of the village, barely accepted by those his age. In retaliation for this exclusion, he'd become a prankster, or, as Kakashi had been fond of saying, a "knucklehead." He smiled, remembering all of the good times he'd had with his first sensei… and all of the hardships. But everything they'd gone through had been worth it. Everything had turned him into the man he'd become.

He left the window and grabbed some clean clothing from the dresser and got into the shower. After a quick scrub (smirking at the rubber duck he'd lost in the rubble when Pain had devastated Konoha years before in what was one of his most legendary battles) he dried off, put his clothes on, grabbed his gear, put on his backpack, and left the apartment.

The roads of Konoha looked much the same now as they did from his own time. After the last rebuild, most of the buildings had been redone according to official village blueprint, save for the ones that the Mokuton user Yamato had sprang up using his jutsu. All in all… almost everything looked exactly the same as when he'd left… but different.

It was eerie, though… almost as if he'd…

_Traveled through time. _Naruto hit himself on the forehead with his palm. _Duh. Did getting younger make me dumber as well?_

It wasn't as if he'd had to think about that every day of his life. Sometimes, idioms stuck with you, no matter how many strange and improbable events occurred.

Though it was early enough in the morning, the streets of the village were already busy. Shopkeepers were hard at work setting up for another busy day of sale, and morning restaurants were packed full of hungry civilians and shinobi, eagerly digging into breakfast. Several outside stands were gathering lines, including the famous Ichiraku ramen stand.

With a pang, Naruto remembered the day that the old noodle man had died. Surprisingly, a large number of the village's upper-crust had shown up at his funeral. It seemed that even one as humble as he had touched the lives of so many folks. His stand had been the center of so many meals… so many good memories. Naruto had cried as the eulogy was read by his daughter, Ayame. That had been the very first funeral that he'd attended as Hokage. It was not to be the last, not by a long shot.

He avoided the noodle stand, though. He had something that was drastically more important than this to do. He glanced up at the Hokage monument… short two heads since the last he'd seen of it. His mind made up, he headed directly toward the academy that sat at the base of it, very near the office of the Hokage.

Though he was hungry, he didn't worry about that too much. In his time, he'd learned that simple hunger was transient. Someone had taught him a trick of channeling chakra through his stomach to quell hunger pains, at least for a short time. He'd let himself eat at lunch, but for now, he could wait.

He made a beeline for the academy, specifically to the classroom where he'd spent four years of study—well, if memory served right, more like one total year of study and three goofing off. He grinned as he recalled all of the hell he'd raised while a student there, including his crowning achievement: painting the Hokage Monument itself! Even when he'd become Hokage himself, that exploit was still being whispered in the halls of the school.

He entered said school amidst the hustle and bustle of students running around the halls, children scattering everywhere at various speeds as if they were all in such a race and just had to win. He smiled, remembering the days when he himself was just like most of those children… well, close enough, he supposed, if you didn't take the Kyuubi into account.

He spotted Inuzuka Kiba off in the distance. He remembered the last time he'd seen them… in his own time. He remembered the devotion the boy had shown when he'd been a man, and the last words they had shared. He struggled not to cry as familiar faces passed all around him.

These were the people he'd become Hokage to protect. And, by god, he would do it all again to save them from their black destiny.

"Naruto!" he heard from somewhere behind him. He turned around to see his former sensei at the school, Umino Iruka, standing at a door with a very, _very _angry expression on his face.

"Ah… um…" Naruto stammered. He recalled the last time he'd seen Iruka in his own reality—it had been a couple days before the village had been destroyed. He had been walking down the street with his wife and daughter—to everyone in the village's surprise, for some reason Anko had fallen in love with him (and wouldn't reveal the circumstances to _anybody_) and had bourn his child. Both were semi-retired, taking missions occasionally when it didn't interfere with their family life. The simple fact that either of them had found each other was enough to power the gossip circles for weeks—there had been whispers before that Iruka liked men, and Anko… well, few thought that there was _any _man, anywhere, who could tame the former student of Orochimaru.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Iruka shouted, jarring Naruto out of his walk down memory lane. "I told you to be here an hour before everyone else to clean up the mess you made yesterday!"

_Mess? _Naruto thought as he walked into the classroom he remembered he'd spent his first year in. He peeked in to see a spot of paint in bright, vivid orange, in the far corner, with the vague shape of a human outline blank in the middle. With a flash of insight, he remembered what had happened: a girl, whose name he couldn't honestly remember anymore, had irritated him one day. So he came back the next—which appeared to be yesterday—with a balloon filled with paint. He had run away from the shocked class with Iruka yelling at him to get the hell back there. Later that evening, one of the Chuunin who worked at the academy had come by with a message from Iruka to get there early in the morning to get it cleaned up.

_Wait a second… _Something clicked in Naruto's mind. He remembered why this date was familiar, and stood out in front of all of the other pranks he'd pulled as a child.

This was the day that Sasuke had… changed.

This was the day that the Uchiha clan had been murdered.

Iruka saw something in Naruto's face as the flash. "Naruto, is something wrong?"

"Iruka-sensei," Naruto said calmly, though with a hint of edge to his voice. "What is today's date?"

Iruka looked confused. "It's the fourteenth of July, Naruto," he said. "Why?"

All of the blood drained from Naruto's face. "Naruto!" Iruka said, genuine panic in his voice at the boy's reaction simply from knowing what the date was.

"But—but the newspaper says it's three days ago!"

Iruka sighed. "Naruto… the newspaper staff went on strike three days ago. It probably won't be resolved until—"

"I'm sorry, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto shouted as he dashed off. "If I'm around tomorrow, you can give me triple duties! I promise I won't pull any more pranks!"

"NARUTOOOO!" The boy heard his name shouted from the halls of the Academy as he fled over nearby rooftops. But by the time Iruka could react, however… Naruto was long gone.

And hopefully, not too late.

* * *

_If I survive all of this, _Naruto thought as he sprinted from rooftop to rooftop toward the Uchiha compound, _I'll _definitely _have to start a better workout program. Just exercising at the Academy isn't enough. That's probably one of the things that held me back all those years ago._

Naruto knew that it would be a really bad idea to hop over the fence into the property leased to the Uchiha clan. But how he would find who he needed to find… especially if they didn't want to be found… could be a problem.

There were several ways that he could do this, and several approaches that would probably lead him into more trouble than he could get himself out of. He had to remind himself that his body, therefore his public identity, was only seven and a half years old. Discounting the fact that he was the vessel of the Kyuubi, there was not a shred of evidence that he had any talent at all as of yet in any of the shinobi arts. Nonetheless, half of the village must have just seen him leaping over rooftops with the skill and agility of a trained veteran… how would he explain that?

It didn't matter, not at all.

Time was the most important thing at the moment. He knew that the Uchiha had been slaughtered by Itachi sometime between ten in the morning and about three in the afternoon. At best, he had a few hours. At worst… he had a few minutes.

Those were not minutes he could afford to waste.

Finally, he landed on the peak of a building—it appeared to be a storehouse for furniture or something—down a couple streets from the Uchiha lands. He furrowed his eyes as he looked at the large tract of land that was forever theirs. He knew the bloodbath that it would soon become if he didn't do something about it.

The fact that Sasuke was at school at the moment gave him some relief. That he would survive this encounter, no matter what Naruto did, was nearly a certainty. But… if he didn't succeed and save his family—no matter what they were plotting—the whole damn world could go up in flames.

The matter of the fact was, he wasn't doing this to save a clan, or to save the friend that had been the closest thing he'd ever had to a brother. He was doing this to save the millions of innocents that would fall under his madness should he fail.

"Time to go save the world," Naruto muttered as he walked to the edge of the roof, flipped off, and strolled to the main Uchiha gates.

By the time he'd gotten there, he had managed to catch his breath. The guard on duty, one of Sasuke's cousins, stood before the gate at attention. He looked similar to what Itachi would look like when he got older. To man the gates of the compound, Naruto knew, one had to be a Jounin, and Uchiha Jounin were formidable indeed. He had to make sure he tread carefully here.

He made sure that the Uchiha man saw him well away walking down the street. The fact that this road only lead to the clan's property was a solid indication that Naruto knew where he was and what he was doing. The Uchiha seemed to come more to attention as he realized that Naruto was making almost a solid beeline for him.

The blond stopped as soon as he was about ten feet away from the man, what most shinobi felt was their "comfort bubble." "What do ya want, kid?" the Uchiha asked. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

Naruto shook his head and attempted to put on a smile. "No, I'm skipping today, actually," he said. "There's something that I need to talk to Itachi about, and it has to do with Sasuke."

The guard cocked an eye. "Sasuke? Itachi? Whatever do you need to see him for?" He then frowned. "Fugaku-san's home," he said. "Perhaps you should talk to him instead of Itachi-kun. If it's about Sasuke, he would be the one to talk to."

Naruto fidgeted, just like a boy his age would. "Well… you see…" he pretended to be uncomfortable with his surroundings—not too hard a feat, seeing as he really _was _getting kind of uncomfortable. "The thing is… it's something that would be better to take to Itachi-san. You know how sometimes you would never tell your daddy something, but you know you can tell your brother or sister and it would be better? And if you told your parents they would make a bigger deal out of it than they should?"

The guard's expression softened marginally. "I guess," he said hesitantly. "But what could be worth skipping school to talk to Itachi about? Are you close friends with him or Sasuke?"

"Sasuke's in my class," Naruto explained. "And he's always going on about how great Itachi is, how awesome his big brother is. Sometimes, it makes me wanna punch him." Naruto smiled as the guard seemed to agree where Naruto was going with this. "But he says Itachi's the best brother in the whole world. I figured, with what's going on, he would be the one to talk to."

The Uchiha guard actually smiled. "He's pretty much right about all that," he said. "Itachi's the strongest Uchiha in several generations. We're all pretty proud of him. Despite all that, though, he always tries to take time out for his little brother." He raised a finger to the short-range radio transceiver on his ear. "What's your name, kid?"

This was the part that he knew could get him into some trouble. "Um… I'm Uzumaki Naruto, sir. First year academy student."

He slowly raised an eye, but if he recognized the name, he didn't let on. "Let me see if he's in," he said. "Being on the ANBU is taking a lot out of his time and energy. There's a really good chance he isn't here right now."

"I can wait," Naruto said. _For as long as it takes._

The guard walked away and turned his head and spoke softly into the microphone near his mouth. He paused, letting the person on the other end reply. After a moment, he nodded, then turned it off and walked back to Naruto. "Itachi-kun just returned from a mission," he said. "In a moment, someone will be here to escort you to the greeting room where you will meet."

Naruto smiled, genuinely this time. "Thanks," he said. "Oh! What's your name?"

The guard smiled good-naturedly. "I'm Sana," he said. "Uchiha Sana, of course."

"Of course," Naruto agreed. "You ain't a Hyuuga!"

Sana actually chuckled. "And thank the gods for that," he said. "I know we Uchiha are strict… but they just have some sticks up their asses!"

Naruto couldn't help but like this man. Already, he could appreciate the difference between the Hyuuga and the Uchiha of old…

_Damn it! _Naruto thought. _I'm still thinking of this as if I'm still in my own time! Nothing about this place is old—except, perhaps, for me. _

After a moment, another Uchiha came from the center of the compound—a girl about thirteen years old or so, it seemed, was to be his escort. When she got to the gate, Sana opened it for her. "Naruto-kun, meet Kamina-chan. Kamina, if you would please escort Naruto to see Itachi to the greeting room, I'd appreciate it. He says that there's something he needs to talk to him about Sasuke."

She nodded. She shared similar facial characteristics as Sana and the rest of her clan, but her face was rounder and fuller, with more color, than any other Uchiha Naruto had ever seen. "Sure thing," she said. "What's wrong with Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto shook his head. "It's a guy thing," he said, putting on a smile.

Kamina smirked. "Boys," she said. "Always with their little secrets. All right, come on. Itachi just got back, but he should be at the greeting room by the time we get there."

"Got it," Naruto said. "Is he always busy? From the way Sasuke talks about him, it's like he's gone all the time."

Kamina frowned at Naruto's question. It seemed a bit personal for her tastes… but what did it matter? There was no harm in letting a kid like Naruto know some more about his friend's brother. "Ever since he joined the ANBU, he's been a lot more busy than usual," she answered. "I don't think he's been getting enough sleep, honestly, they've been working him so hard."

Naruto knew not to press his luck with the kunoichi. "That sucks," he said. "So… you're his cousin or something?"

Kamina smiled. "Third cousin, actually," she said. "Our great-great grandfather was the same man. But after that, our bloodlines split on the family tree."

"Ah… ok, I think I get it now," Naruto said. "I'm not the smartest one around, sorry!"

The girl chuckled as they reached the door to the closest building to the gate. "Not a problem," she said. "I'm kinda dopey too." She opened the double doors and gestured for Naruto to enter before her. He did so and found himself in a simple foyer without ornament or embellishment.

"The greeting room is through here," Kamina said, once again taking the lead. She took Naruto to a room with a sliding door made of rice paper. She slid it open and peeked inside. "He's not here yet," she said as she entered. She waved her hand at one end of a short traditional table. "He should be here in a moment, if you'd care to wait."

Naruto nodded. "Sure," he said. He sat down at the furthest end and crossed his legs under the surface. "I'm in no hurry, really."

That was a lie—he was more pressed for time than he could believe. He was gambling on the fact that Itachi would want to find out what Naruto wanted before he destroyed his clan. An anomaly such as this, surely, was worth investigating.

"If you say so," Kamina said. "Good luck with your guy talk, boy."

Naruto smiled. "Thanks," he said. "I hope everything is ok. It's really really important."

Kamina simply smirked as she left the room and closed the door. _All _kids thought that everything that they did was important.

As soon as Kamina left, Naruto let the smile slide from his face. He didn't feel like faking his emotions when he didn't have an audience. He wouldn't attempt to lie to himself for his own benefit—he knew himself too well.

_This had better work, _Naruto thought solemnly.

He sat as still as possible. He had no idea what would happen during this meeting, and he needed every ounce of concentration if he was going to play this right.

After about five minutes, the door slid open. Naruto looked up to see a face that he hadn't seen since he was sixteen years old.

"Uzumaki Naruto?" Uchiha Itachi said as he entered and closed the door behind him. "I've been told that you're here on Sasuke's behalf, for some reason. What's going on?" He was dressed in his ANBU gear, his rat mask hanging off of his hip. His short sword's hilt stuck over his shoulder.

Naruto kept his face blank. "It's something that he doesn't know about yet," he said slowly. "But if we don't do something soon, I'm afraid that he could be hurt."

Concern flew to Itachi's face. It was hard to reconcile the brotherly concern he obviously felt for Sasuke to the cold-blooded murderer he knew that he very well could be, very, very soon. "Is someone threatening my brother?" he asked with steel in his voice. "Is one of the older students harassing him? If so…" He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to reveal fully adult Sharingan. "Tell me, Naruto… what's wrong?"

Naruto hummed. It seemed that the records he'd had access to once he'd become Hokage in his own time had been true—from what the Sandaime had written, Itachi had begged to allow Sasuke to survive the massacre. For him to become this riled up so easily… perhaps he wasn't the monster that official history had made him out to be.

He frowned. He knew that he would have to choose his next words very, very carefully. "Well," he said, "that's just the thing… nobody's bothering him right now. In fact, he's one of the happiest people I know. He's the best in our class, he's really nice, he helps out some of the others who aren't so good with shuriken, and he almost has a smile on his face."

Itachi grimaced. "Then… what is the point in calling me here? I just got back from a mission, and I have to get right into the next one as soon as you leave. You have no idea how busy I am."

"No," Naruto said. "I do, actually. Sasuke won't shut up about how cool you are, or how you're only the third ninja in the whole village to ever become a Jounin at age thirteen—right behind Hatake Kakashi and the Sandaime himself. But lately, he is a little more sad than usual."

Itachi leaned forward just a little bit. "Sad? Why would he be sad?"

Naruto looked into the crimson eyes of the Sharingan dead on—something he hadn't done safely since he'd been thirteen himself. "Because," said Naruto, "he misses his big brother. Do you know how much he looks up to you?"

Itachi's expression twisted ever so slightly. "I have my duties," he said with an edge in his tone. "Both as a shinobi and as an Uchiha. He's old enough to understand that."

Naruto nodded, but closed his eyes and covered them with one hand, as if exasperated. "He does," he said. "He always says how you're the 'pride of the clan' or something. How you're stronger than your dad, even, the leader of your clan."

Itachi visibly frowned. "Does he, now," he said softly.

"Mmm-hmm," Naruto mumbled. "But, Itachi—I have a question for you, if I may ask?"

The Uchiha paused. "If it is about Sasuke… go ahead."

"Ok… I just wonder… if he worships you so much, but you're gone so much… what is he really looking up to? He wants to be just like you. If you're not there when he needs you, he'll probably be pretty sad."

Itachi seemed to think about Naruto's words. "Perhaps…" he said. "But if I'm not here… where would I be?"

It was time for Naruto to put all of his cards on the table. "Gone from Konoha," he said. "Exiled and persecuted… after all, no matter why you did it, people who destroy their clan from the inside out are rarely welcome home at any time."

Itachi was _fast. _He'd drawn his sword leapt over the short table, and swung his blade at Naruto's neck before he had a chance to blink. Luckily… Naruto was just as fast.

He'd raised a kunai at the exact point where the edge of Itachi's sword would have decapitated him and absorbed the full force of the impact without budging. "I had really, really hoped you wouldn't do that," Naruto said slowly as he took his hand away from his eyes and looked at Itachi.

The Uchiha's jaw dropped. Where Naruto's eyes had just been blue, now they were a brilliant golden color, and instead of a simple pin-point pupil in their centers, they had become elongated horizontally. His eyelids were a striking scarlett.

Naruto had entered Toad Sage Mode.

"I had hoped," Naruto continued, "that you wouldn't try to kill me, Itachi-san. This would have been so much easier if we had gotten along. Now, I would suggest you putting your sword down, but you can't. Would you like to know why? It's actually quite clever: I'm sending an extremely minute electrical current through my kunai and into your sword. That current, in turn, is numbing your entire body and paralyzing you. There is absolutely no counter to this technique—as long as I remain still, the connection will remain.

"This was a jutsu designed for two people, by the way: the user, obviously me, and whoever my partner is to finish you off. Unfortunately, I don't have a partner at the moment. I'm all alone in a complex filled with the most powerful shinobi in the village. I _could _try to kill you… and I'd probably succeed. But that's not why I'm here. So, I'm going to let you go, Itachi, but you'd do well to remember that I'm probably good enough right now to at least match you, if not beat you… so I suggest you behave."

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Naruto got the slightest thrill telling the man who just might become the most powerful man in recorded history to, essentially, mind his manners. He backed up, being careful to keep his kunai in contact with Itachi's sword, and when he felt he was at a safe distance, disconnected.

Itachi slumped to the table and almost fell off. The artificial numbness had given way to real numbness, and he no longer, for the moment, had a way to control his body. The first thing he regained any control of, it appeared, was his mouth. "Wha—who are you?" he rasped. "You aren't U-Uzumak-ki N-Naruto. He is on-only a student… only one living p-person knows the techniques of the t-toads." His eyes flared open in apparent understanding. "Jiraiya-sama?"

Naruto laughed aloud. "No," he said. "I'm not Jiraiya of the Sannin. Believe me, I'm Uzumaki Naruto. That much I can promise you. But there are things going on that you don't understand."

Itachi pushed himself up wearily into something resembling a kneeling position. There was no color in his face—it wasn't due to any disease. He was simply shocked that he could be so easily taken down by a _child. _"Who are you?" Itachi repeated, locking eyes with Naruto.

Naruto sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I already told you," he said. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and I really, _really _don't have time for this." He flew through a series of hand seals. A muffled _whump _echoed softly off of the rice paper walls. "There," he said with satisfaction. "Itachi, I want to tell you exactly what I just did, just so you can understand just how serious I am right now. Those walls are now neigh impenetrable, reinforced with my own chakra and the Sage chakra that I've gathered. You seem to know about Sage chakra—so you know that you are in a heap of trouble.

"Sound cannot escape this room, but it _can _enter. This barrier will not be released until _I _decide. So do me a favor and listen up, cause I have a long, difficult story to tell you." Naruto took a deep breath. Where to begin?

At the beginning.

* * *

By the end of Naruto's narrative, Itachi had regained nearly all of his physical sensation. He'd listened, without saying a word, during the whole time Naruto had spoken. "That was the last time I personally saw you," Naruto said, recounting his fight with the Itachi clone when he, Sakura, and the old lady from the Sand village, Elder Chiyo had been forced to get by him. "Though it wasn't much more than a clone, the body had your appearance, your personality, and all of your techniques, except for your Mangekyou. I killed… well, I can't really say I killed you, seeing as how you weren't actually there. But I _beat _you. So… it guess it counts.

"Not too long after that, though, you fought Sasuke. I'm not too sure of the details, because there were only a few eye-witnesses. But from what we were able to put together, you pulled out all the stops, and Sasuke still beat you. Eventually, Madara implanted your eyes into his head, giving him his own eternal Mangekyou. About a year after that, he killed Madara, killed the remaining Akatsuki, and took command of the Bijuu. Though it took him the better part of the next decade, he managed to beat and capture even the Hachibi—to put this into perspective, Killer Bee, as we called him, was an even stronger shinobi than _me _using all of my power."

Naruto paused for a moment to collect himself. "You have no idea the hell I've been through, or how long I've been waiting to be able to do this," he said softly. "You have no idea the hell you will release upon the world if you kill your clan. Trust me, Itachi—I beg of you. Disobey the council. Convince your clan to step down. Try to negotiate with them. Hell… if it comes to it…" Naruto frowned. "I might give them my loyalty if that's what it takes."

"Your… loyalty?" Itachi asked.

The boy nodded. "The political clout, not to mention the potential martial advantage, possessing the Kyuubi would bring just might stall their rebellion. If I have to do it, I will."

Itachi frowned. "That wouldn't do any good," he said. "My father is dead set on revolution. It is only a matter of time."

"Then stop them!" Naruto barked. "I know that the elders have commanded you to wipe them out… but there has to be another way! A massacre can't be the only solution to this quagmire!"

Itachi's eyes blazed—figuratively. "I have my orders," he said coldly. "And I will carry them out."

Naruto froze. "Even after what I told you?" he asked. "Even knowing that you would be damning your brother? Don't forget, Itachi—you want Konoha to remember him favorably. But if you do this… that won't happen. He'll destroy himself in his quest for revenge on you."

The older boy stood up. "Then… perhaps I won't run," he said. "Maybe, when my clan is gone, I will stay and tell the truth. I will tell the whole village what I did… and why. And Sasuke will still be alive. He can hate me as much as he wants. I don't care."

"But you do care," Naruto said, mirroring Itachi's motions as he got to his feet. "You care more than you want to admit."

Itachi scowled. "Do you think this is _easy _for me?" he yelled. "I have been assigned to kill my entire clan! My family! I killed my best friend four days ago—but you already knew that! You know _everything, _don't you? Tell me, Uzumaki, how do I get myself out of this mess? _Tell me!_"

"You want me to tell you?" Naruto yelled back. "You want me to fix all of your problems? Do you want me to make everything better? God damn it, Itachi! That's why I'm here! But I need your help, or there's nothing that I can do! Itachi, I need you to keep it together long enough for us to figure something out the doesn't get your hands dirtied with the blood of any more of your clan!"

"Then tell me what I need to do!" Itachi said loudly. "Tell me, time traveler—what should I do?"

Naruto was silent as he examined the Uchiha's face. It had become nearly beet-red, and somewhere along the line his Mangekyou Sharingan had become activated. "Itachi," he said slowly. "I need you to listen to me closely. Stand down. Turn off the Mangekyou, and stand… the hell… down."

Itachi jerked. It seemed that he hadn't consciously triggered the forbidden doujutsu. He did as asked, his eyes returning to their natural dark grey. "I'm sorry," he said evenly. "I am still having trouble controlling my… new technique."

Naruto nodded. "I know. I've read some of the Uchiha records. Initially, they say, both the Sharingan and Mangekyou Sharingan react to heightened states of awareness—including panic or aggression. But you have to learn to control yourself."

"The… Uchiha records?" Itachi said inquisitively. "But how—"

"Access to any clan's records, even broken clans such as the Uchiha was to me, is fully open to the Hokage. In my time… I was the Hokage."

Itachi's face paled back to its usual pallor. "You were… Hokage?"

Naruto nodded. "Yes," he said. "I was the Sixth Hokage."

"The Sixth… Who was the Fifth?" asked Itachi.

Naruto smirked. "Well," he said, "that's a long story… but to cut it short, after Sarutobi died in the war, Tsunade took his place."

Itachi sat down in a slump. "I think I've heard enough. Even if events change from here on in, there are probably some things that I don't want to know."

Naruto nodded. "That's fair," he said. "But there is one more thing I think I should tell you. This is something that is vitally critical to you that you cannot ignore."

Now he had Itachi's attention. "And what would that be?" he asked.

"According to what Sasuke told me a year ago during one of the rare times we were able to meet without fighting… Itachi, by the time you turn eighteen, you will get cancer. I don't know of what, and I don't know when, exactly, it will happen. But when, in my time, you fought Sasuke… you were weakened enough for him to kill you. Had it not been for that, you would have easily been able to take him down."

Itachi's eyes widened in shock. "Cancer?" he questioned softly. "It cannot be… Uchiha _never _get cancer. It's never happened before!"

"The truth is the truth," Naruto said. "You can believe me or not—it's your choice. But unless you see a doctor—and _soon—_you'll soon become too sick to function, much less be a shinobi." He sat down to be on a more even level with Itachi—though, seeing as he was in a seven-year-old body, there wasn't too much of a difference one way or another. "Itachi, this is a death sentence for you. Don't think I care for you one way or another, though. I'm trying to save this whole goddamned _hemisphere. _So you have a pretty tough decision to make, Itachi-san: either tell the Elders to shove this mission up their asses and try to talk to your clan one last time… or die right here, in this room. Sure, I'll probably be hunted—enough people have seen me come in here that word will be out soon enough. But I'd rather that than the holocaust I came from."

Itachi looked at him carefully. "Do you truly think that you can kill me?" Itachi asked.

Naruto nodded curtly. "I do," he said. "Don't let my appearance fool you. Inside this body is the mind of someone who's fought wars single-handedly and won. I know enough techniques to be Hokage. Me, in this body, without weapons, without time to prepare, against someone with the Mangekyou?" He smirked. "I have you easily overpowered."

The Uchiha absorbed this information. "Is that so," he whispered. "Then… what are my options, realistically?"

Naruto stood up. "Your options? You have plenty of options. Kill; don't kill. Obey; disobey. Live… die. All these choices are yours." "But know this, Itachi: if you make the wrong decision, and you run, I promise you that I will find you. I will find you, and… I will kill you. Do you believe me?" He held up one hand in a half-ram hand sign. "Kai." The pulse of power that rippled gently from the walls and ceiling riffled his and Itachi's hair.

Itachi gazed at Naruto, his cold grey eyes attempting to burn a hole in his head. "I do," he said. "Now… leave. I have a mission to go on."

Naruto leaned forward over the table and let his hands prop him up. "I know what mission you are on," he hissed, keeping his voice low now that his barrier was no longer activated. "Trust me, Itachi! It's not worth it!"

"Perhaps not to you," the Uchiha replied. "But…"

Naruto had drawn his kunai from his holster and had it at Itachi's throat before the man could say another word. His Sage Mode, of course, was still active. "No. Buts." The dagger's tip was as close as it could possibly be without cutting him open. "Make the right decision." He withdrew the kunai and stuck it back in his thigh rig.

He got off of the table, took off his backpack, and rooted around in it for a moment. "What are you doing?" Itachi asked.

"Evening the odds," Naruto snarled. He pulled out a brush, a corked bottle of ink, and a file folder full of seal tags. "Sasuke told me everything, you know. Everything he knew about the day… well, _today. _According to him, Madara helped you kill your entire family. Is that true?"

Itachi nodded slowly. "Yes," he said with a reserved tone. "I had planned on… going it alone. But last night, I actually caught him sneaking into the compound. Perhaps he let me catch him… perhaps not. I don't know. But… he butt into my assignment. I don't know how he knew. I didn't know he was even still alive."

"_Nobody _did," Naruto said. "Kakashi-sensei and Yamato-san were both surprised as hell when we learned he was around, not to mention in charge of Akatsuki. I actually fought the guy once. I know how he works." He removed a piece of paper from the folder and uncorked the ink. "He specializes in some really powerful space-time jutsu. I don't know if that's an ability he got from his eternal Mangekyou, or if it's something he does on his own… but he's extremely formidable with it." He picked up the brush, took a deep breath, and began scribing a complicated series of characters and symbols from top to bottom.

"What is this?" Itachi asked.

"This," Naruto said, "is a seal tag that interferes with space/time techniques. If you put it on Madara, you just might get the half-second edge you need to take him down." He finished his calligraphy, put his supplies away, and stood up from where he had sat down. "I made it just in case I ever fought him again. It never happened, but I ran into some other shinobi over the years who could bend space.

"If you do use this… you only get one shot. Cut off his head. That's the only way you can be sure that he's dead. When his head is off, destroy his eyes immediately. Don't ask—I don't know why. But I know that that's what my Sasuke did to him when he was defeated, and he did it pretty quickly. Maybe it's an Uchiha pride thing… maybe it's just paranoia. I don't know. All I know is that you won't get any second chances with this."

"You're the only one who can have a second chance… is that right?" Itachi said venomously.

The blond nodded. "Damn right. This whole _world _is my second chance. I'm here to make sure that you—_all _of you—have a future."

He then rubbed his face with his palm. "What happens next is your choice, Itachi. Basically… the fate of the entire world depends on what you decide to do today. Please… I can't do this again. This was my only shot to change things for the better. Now it's your turn." He walked to the door and slid it open. There was nobody standing there… not that he had expected there to be. He turned back to Itachi, his eyes back to their normal cerulean blue "I'll show myself out. I remember the way."

With that, Naruto left the room, the building, and the property.

He didn't look back.

* * *

A few hours later, Naruto was back at his apartment. He knew that he was in crunch time right now. By three or so, he would know exactly what Itachi's decision would be.

He had been pacing his room since he had returned from lunch. Having long grown bored with simply walking around in circles on the floor, he had graduated himself to walking up and down his walls and under the ceiling. When shinobi pace… they do it _right._

He didn't stop moving that entire time. Twelve… One… two… and finally, three o'clock rolled around. Naruto was sure that he'd have heard something from the streets by now if an entire clan had been massacred. Was this a good sign?

"No news is good news," Naruto mumbled to himself, remembering a saying he'd heard years before. As soon as that crossed his mind, he heard a commotion outside. He was on the ceiling at the time, so he got an upside-down view of several dozen people, civilians mixed with ninja, rushing by his apartment building going in the direction of the Uchiha stronghold.

_Perhaps I spoke too soon, _Naruto thought. _It's time to see what Itachi has decided to do. _He flipped deftly to the floor and dashed out of the door, not bothering to lock it behind him.

He joined the throng of people rushing toward the Uchiha compound, easily keeping up. A few looked down at him as he ran alongside them, and one or two seemed to recognize him, but there was no time for words or insults—something _big _was going on, and nobody here wanted to miss it.

It didn't take long for them to reach their destination… though there were so many people standing outside the gates, it was impossible for Naruto, as short as he was, to see over the heads of the congregation.

He looked up and around and saw the perfect place—there was a roof just across the street from the gate. Several shinobi were already up there, looking out over the people, but there was still plenty of room there.

He leapt straight up from his spot, startling a little old woman, aiming at the edge of the roof. He misjudged the distance, however, and nearly missed it. If an older Chuunin or Jounin—he had on a vest, but no other identifying insignia, so it was hard to tell—hadn't have grabbed his arm and swung him onto the shingles, he wouldn't have made it. "Thanks," Naruto said as he settled in and adjusted to the slope of the rooftop.

"No problem," he said. "You would have fallen on some lady or something if I hadn't have saved your butt."

Naruto grinned sheepishly. "Yeah… sorry. I'm still getting used to all this." He looked over the massed people struggling to jockey for position. "What's going on here?" he asked, feigning innocence. "Why's everyone trying to look into the Uchiha place?"

The shinobi frowned. "You haven't heard? The Uchiha caught one of their own as he attempted to kill his whole clan! Three of them were dead before one of the elite Uchiha caught up to him and killed him somehow. This is a really big deal."

"But how does everybody know about it already?" Naruto asked.

The man snorted. "The kid, Sasuke… he saw his brother covered in blood. He ran out screaming through the streets. Apparently he's pretty easily startled."

Naruto's blood ran cold. "Sasuke… saw Itachi?"

The man nodded. "Yup. Now all of the Uchiha in the village are back inside, and they're refusing to let anybody else in—not even the rest of the Police Corps who aren't Uchiha. Probably won't let anyone less than the Hokage himself inside. This is one of the biggest deals to hit the village since… well, since the Kyuubi hit us seven years ago."

The blond was getting kind of uncomfortable. It probably wouldn't take much for him to be recognized. "That big, huh?" he asked, brushing aside his insecurities. "In that case… I can't wait to see what happens next."

"Me neither," the man said. "Hell, by the time all this is done, half of the freaking village might be out here."

Naruto nodded and sat down on the sloped surface. "This just happened?" he asked.

"Yeah," his elder said. "About fifteen minutes ago, actually."

"Word travels fast," Naruto said with a scowl.

"In Konoha? Nothing stays secret for too long."

_Don't I know it, _Naruto thought to himself, though he kept his mouth shut… a skill that had taken him years to master. The man he'd been speaking to seemed to sense his reluctance to continue the conversation, and kept to himself.

"Something's going on!" someone at the front of the crowd shouted. The front doors of the building closest to the gates—the building, in fact, that he and Itachi had met at earlier that morning—were opening. Several Uchiha, lead by none other than Itachi himself, exited and slowly walked to the gates to the villagers.

The noise of the crowd slowly subsided as the procession grew closer to the people. Eventually, they were dead silent as they reached the gates and opened them up, pushing the people back slightly as they opened outwards.

"Can I have your attention, please!" one of the Uchiha with graying hair asked in a normal voice, though it seemed to boom out over as if amplified. The tension in the air was nearly palatable. "My name is Uchiha Yashiro. Today, a tragedy has befallen the Uchiha clan. A figure from our village's dark past has returned, to seek revenge on my tribe for wrongs done over two generations ago. As unbelievable as it may sound, the reality is… the one known as Uchiha Madara has returned to Konohagakure."

Gasps came from many of the people in the crowd. Uchiha Madara, as most of them knew, was one of the two founders of the village. He was said to be equal to Senju Hashirama, the first Hokage, in nearly every way. "Please, please!" he said. "I know it sounds unbelievable, but it is true! We have indisputable evidence that it was, in fact, _the _Madara who attacked us, his clan. For whatever reason, he came here with the intent to slaughter us all… and he very well could have done it, too. If it weren't for the timely intervention of perhaps the strongest of us, Uchiha Itachi, we all might be dead by now."

A shock ran through Naruto. So, Itachi had done the right thing _after _all. "What happened?" some woman in the crowd asked Yashiro.

He grimaced. "I'm afraid," he said, "that Madara had already killed the head of our clan and two others—Uchihas Tekka and Teyaki. The three were in an informal clan meeting to discuss routine police business. From what we gather, Madara ambushed the three and managed to kill each one before they could react or counterattack. From there, he went through the building, looking for other clan members.

"Fortunately, Itachi was already in the building. Itachi, already the strongest of us at a young age of thirteen, proved more than a match for the legendary figure. After a short but intense battle, Itachi decapitated Madara, ending the threat to our clan."

Murmurings continued again in the crowd. The power of Uchiha were legendary… the power of the cofounder of Konoha? Doubly so. That Itachi could defeat him so easily…

"We will spend the next three days mourning the deaths of so prominent members of our clan," Yashiro said, "then we will hold our clan election to determine our next head of clan. We will ask that we not be disturbed until then… save for the Senior Village Council or the Hokage himself, our gates will be locked. Please respect our privacy in the interim."

Naruto's jaw dropped with just about everybody else's in the crowd as Yashiro made his announcements, though he suspected it was for different reasons. _He… he actually did it, _he thought. _He managed to save the freakin world. _He smiled as he flickered out of existence with a Shunshin. _I knew he could do it._

He appeared on a rooftop some distance away. _But now what do I do? _he asked himself. _What am I here for, now that I stopped the horrors?_

"Do you really think that you're finished that easily?"

Naruto spun around to see something that he had never counted on seeing again—the physical representation of time that had called itself Winston. "You!" Naruto shouted. "What are you doing here?"

Winston laughed and tapped his cane on the roof. "I am merely here to congratulate you on a job well done," he replied genially. "To be honest, had I not known how this would turn out, I wouldn't think you had it in you to achieve your goals. Very well done, my boy. Very well done."

"Bull shit," Naruto snarled. "I almost screwed up! If it hadn't of been for one thing, nothing would have gone right!"

Winston simply put on a smile. "And yet you stand before me."

Naruto stopped in mid-rant. "Well… yes."

"Come, now! Just think what kind of an adventure you would have had if there were no pressure!"

"Adventure? Adventure? I put myself in more risk than I should have! Do you have any idea just how pissed off I am right now?"

The wraith chuckled. "I do," he said. "Omniscient, remember? I know all there is to know. But you did very well in saving your realm… this time around."

Naruto frowned. "This time? What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Winston, "this world of yours is very… interesting. Very fraught with danger. You will always have your hands full… though that isn't any different from what you used to live, correct?"

The time-displaced boy/man sighed. "Yeah, I guess," he said. "I guess I can look on the bright side—now I know how to prevent a lot of the problems that had cropped up in my career."

"That's the spirit!" Winston said. He twirled his cane dexterously. "You may not believe me, but you are very necessary to this world's survival. Think, boy—how many fights have you been in where you, and _only _you, could have won?"

"Well… I've been in a lot of fights," Naruto said. "But ones only I could have won? Anyone with enough skill could have done all of that!"

Winston smiled and shook his head. "No, Naruto," he said. "You may not believe it… but there are some things that you, and _only _you, can do. That's what makes you so… so damn _interesting." _

"Well, glad you're entertained," Naruto said. "But this is my _life. _I'm not here for your entertainment."

The posh man chuckled. "Of course not," he said. "But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy watching you, does it?"

Naruto paused. "I guess not," he finally said. "Just… try to stay out of my life from now on, ok? It's complicated enough as it is."

Winston smiled. "I understand," he said. "You life has been… difficult. But it is difficult so that it can be easier on others. Have you ever thought of that?"

Naruto's expression locked into stoicism. "Every time I kill someone," he said, "I hope that I'm doing it for the right reasons. That maybe—just maybe—I'm saving someone's life by taking one. That I'm doing the right thing."

The apparition looked kindly on Naruto. "You are a force for good," said Winston. "An extremely powerful force for good. In all of reality, few individuals have the power to change the world as you do. Keep up with that… and I promise you, you will never truly regret it." He pulled a pocket watch out of his pocket. "I really must run," he said. "But it has been good to talk to you again. You are a _most _interesting young man."

"Thanks," Naruto said, a slight smile alighting on his face. "Whatever you mean by that, anyway."

Winston waved a hand. "Bye, young one!" He disappeared, as if he had never been there.

"I really hate it when people disappear," Naruto muttered. "It just creeps me out."

He looked up into the sky to see the sun. In the midsummer, it was still very high in the sky. It just hit him—"Oh, gods!" he cried. "I have to do the whole academy all over again!"

* * *

Nobody saw that coming, did ya? This wasn't my best work ever, but it wasn't too bad. I actually had some fun writing all of this. Now that this little arc is done, we're gonna have ourselves a little timeskip… to the FUTURE. Er… Relatively speaking, of course.

Please read and review!


	4. Volume 1 Chapter 4

A/N: I've decided to change things up a bit and get some progress on Second Chances in lieu of Rising Star. If you haven't read it, go ahead—it's actually a pretty good story.

I've spent quite some time thinking about this next chapter, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I got one of those flashes of inspiration that take time to come. After a good bit of consideration, I've decided on the next phase of SC, and I think it'll be as epic as anything out there.

Hope ya'll had a great new year!

Next chapter, I'll do some review answers. For now… please read and review!

* * *

**Chapter 4**

"Naruto," Iruka said calmly from the front of the classroom. "Would you mind telling me, just what in the hell are you doing?" Though his expression was cool, a vein in his temple was starting to bulge.

Naruto was leaning back in his seat, a pencil balanced on its tip on the peak of his nose. His face was turned toward the ceiling, and he seemed to be in intense concentration. "What does it look like, Iruka-sensei?" he asked. "I'm balancing a pencil on my nose."

Iruka inhaled and exhaled. Though Naruto was the best student in his class, with Uchiha Sasuke a close second, the boy could be somewhat… no, _very _trying at times. "I can see that," he said. "What I want to know is… WHY THE HELL AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO MY LECTURE?"

Naruto seemed to be startled, for the pencil fell over and onto his forehead. "Lighten up, Iruka-sensei!" he said as he grabbed it before it could fall to the floor. "I've already read this chapter. Everybody knows about the Third Shinobi World War. We went over it last year… and the year before that… do you really think we need to learn it _again?_"

Iruka closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. _One… two… three… _he mentally counted off. Sometimes he was able to make it all the way to nine before he blew up. It seemed to be a game that the boy liked to play.

Today, once again, adding to a number that was already too high to accurately log, Iruka lost the counting game. "YOU IDIOT!" he shouted. "You are here to _learn, _Naruto! You are here to pay attention, and just _maybe _I'll let you pass your exams next week!"

Several of Naruto's classmates giggled. This was a scene that had, more or less, been played and replayed fairly consistently over the past few years. Naruto was, they knew, an orphan without a clan, but he was still tied with the brother of one of the strongest shinobi in the known world in their academic and practical scores. There was no possible way that Naruto could be held back—the Hokage would throw a fit! But Iruka needed to vent, and the most convenient—and, surprisingly, perfectly _willing, _it seemed—target he had was the boy he'd come to love like a son, Uzumaki Naruto himself.

The boy knew that he could probably push Iruka just a little bit more before his teacher _really _got mad at him, but decided to, for once, go easy on the academy instructor. He leaned forward in his seat and rested his arms on the desktop. "Okay, okay!" Naruto said with a smirk. "Calm down, Iruka-sensei! I'll behave, I'll behave!"

"That would be a first," Iruka said dryly as his face returned to its normal color. "Really, Naruto—are you seriously that bored in my class?"

Naruto held up his hands and shrugged. "Well… Yeah. Sorry, Iruka-sensei, but it's been a while since I've actually _learned _anything in here."

Iruka sighed and closed his eyes. It wasn't that he was a bad teacher—he knew that he was an _excellent _teacher, especially since he taught the class by himself. The real problem was, he knew… Naruto was just too good a student for him to handle.

He'd been the young boy's sensei for four years now… ever since he'd entered the Academy, he had shown an extraordinary amount of intelligence and ingenuity. The problem was, he'd only shown any of it with pranks and practical jokes… at least, for the first year he'd been his student. He remembered very vividly the day that he'd changed, though…

It was odd, and he'd thought a lot about it since then, but Naruto seemed to really blossom and come into his own shortly after Uchiha Madara, the most infamous of Konoha's nuke-nin, had been killed by the living legend that was Uchiha Itachi. After Sasuke's momentary trauma of seeing his brother covered in the traitor's blood and standing over his body, he had bounced back surprisingly quickly and, to the astonishment of all, became good friends with Naruto.

Since that day, Naruto was known to frequent the Uchiha compound as a friend of Sasuke's, though he seemed to be on good terms with _all _of the Uchiha… most especially, though, with the man who'd been unanimously voted the new headsman of them all, Itachi.

The gossip that had gone around the village (mostly muttered under the breaths of people who knew the facts of the Kyuubi inside of Naruto) when he'd started going to the Uchiha tracts was that one of them, perhaps Itachi himself, had put the jinchūriki under his control somehow—hypnosis of that caliber wasn't unknown to Uchiha, after all. But no… for whatever reason, Uzumaki Naruto seemed to actually be a welcome _guest _at the household of the most powerful clan in Konoha, who seemed to be allowed to come and go as he pleased, even when even the Hokage had to make an appointment to visit.

Many things about that event were odd… but there was one thing that stuck out more than anything else: that morning, before the incident, Naruto had gone out running from the academy at full tilt, faster than Iruka had ever seen him move—faster, in fact, than most shinobi could casually dash.

So many pieces to this puzzle, and so many mysteries to string together. No matter how many times he tried to turn it all over in his head, Iruka could never figure out how any of this had anything to do with the other… if it did at all. The one time that Iruka had asked Naruto where he had gone that morning, the blond youth simply told him that he had an appointment to get to, though he didn't say where or why.

He shook his head and brought himself back to reality. "Listen, Naruto… I know you're bored. I know that you're just spinning your wheels right now. But you have just one… more… week. Can you please, _please _try to _not _make me wanna strangle you until you graduate?"

Naruto smiled. "I'll do my best," he promised.

Iruka sighed and palmed his face. "I suppose that's as much as I can expect," he said. "Now… before your little circus trick got me off target… we were talking about the Second Battle of the South Plains…"

Naruto looked at Iruka as he talked, but he'd mastered the art of anonymously zoning out the _first _time he'd gone through this school. This time, though, when he did it, it was somewhat justified: in his own realm, he had been _Hokage. _That he was able to remain in the Academy and maintain the cover of a student without letting anyone know his true power was a testament to his discipline.

_Three years, _he privately mused. _For three years… I've been doing this. _He looked around surreptitiously at his former—_god damn it! I still think like that!—_current classmates. Some of the best people in the world that he ever knew were represented in this room. Sakura… loyal to a fault and one of the smartest kunoichi ever produced by Konohagakure. Kiba… The single most ferocious specialist he'd ever had the fortune not to fight. Shino… possibly the greatest tracker in the Recon Corps…

And then, of course, there was Hyuuga Hinata.

He sighed as he thought about her as he had once known her. Hinata had always been a good friend of his. Ever since the day Pain had attacked Konoha and she confessed her love to him, though, things had been… well, _awkward. _After the immediate conflict with the Akatsuki as an organized organization was over and done with—though there was still the problem of Madara himself to deal with—he'd talked to her about her feelings for him. He admitted that he thought that she was attractive, but his feelings for her were nothing more than those of affection. In no uncertain terms, he told her that he was in love with Sakura, and always would.

She took it as well as he could expect… though not as well as he had hoped. For months after their talk, she wouldn't look him in the eye (though, to be fair, she hardly looked _anybody _in the eye) and avoided being around him, and once outright refused to go on a mission with him and his squad, forcing her cousin Neji to stand in for her. Over time, she seemed to get over him… but from what he heard from other sources, a small flame was still lit for him in her heart.

His only love would ever be Sakura. That could never, ever change. No matter where or when he was in his life, she would always remain the most important person to him. The fact that, even _now, _she and all of the other girls in his class—as well as many of the girls in the younger grades—were _still _fawning over the boy didn't mean anything.

If he was going to win her heart, he would have to do it the honest way.

These musings, of course, lead right back to the whole reason he'd embarked on this epic voyage through time and space: Uchiha Sasuke himself.

Even with all of the major differences in the way this Sasuke and his own previous Sasuke had grown up, there was still almost no way to connect the two. That _this _one could have been _that _one was almost unbelievable. Where the old one was cold and stoic, the new version was warm… kind…

_Hell, _Naruto thought. _This guy's one of the nicest guys around._

Truth be told, Naruto had only the vaguest recollections of the old Sasuke from before the slaughter of his clan. He was young at the time, eager in life, and just beginning to understand the world around him. He didn't know anything about the clan system in the village, had no idea what the politics of the world were like, and he _definitely _had no clue why people hated him. But his child's memory was certain of one thing; if Sasuke had grown up normally, _this _was what the end result would have been.

_This _was the Sasuke that should always have been.

_His _Sasuke had not grown up during his most important years with a family that loved him and cherished him. _His _Sasuke had not grown up with a family to give him the proper training and discipline. In fact, _his _Sasuke wasn't nearly as strong as _this _one was. In many ways, this Sasuke was the brother that he had never had.

After he'd averted the massacre of the Uchiha, possibly one of the biggest disasters of shinobi history, Naruto had found himself spending more and more time at the compound the clan called home. Of course, much of that time had been spent talking to Itachi for various reasons—not the least of which was answering whatever questions the young Jounin had—but he found himself spending a good bit of time with Sasuke, too. After all, why not? This was the boy who, in his own time, (he really had to stop thinking like that) would grow up to become one of the most dangerous people in the world. His power would surpass that of the Sannin themselves. In fact, only Naruto, with as many aces up his sleeves as he could fit, could hope to match him and pray for a draw.

If he had stopped and fought Sasuke at the spot in the forest with the high-density chakra in the area, he just _might _have beaten him. True, he would probably have to go through both a full salvo of Sage chakra, then probably his whole gamut of Kyuubi-powered techniques, but he could have beaten him. But the cost of that victory would have been far, far too high. The very landscape would have been irrevocably altered, and more than likely nobody within miles would have been left alive. Activating his time travel technique was his last and final option for a better world… a world without the threat of the Akatsuki, without Madara, without Orochimaru.

Oh, yes… Naruto had been very, _very _busy over the past three years.

For quite some time after the Uchiha crisis had been averted, he had struggled on the moral and philosophical ramifications of further acting on his knowledge of the future. True, without Madara to lead them, Akatsuki most likely wouldn't be quite the threat they would end up being. From what he knew from talking to the Mizukage of his time, Madara had been the power behind the seat of the Yondaime Mizukage. The fact that the future Yondaime Mizukage wasn't yet in power at the time of Madara's death didn't mean a thing. All it meant was that someone else was most likely the mad Uchiha's puppet… But who?

And most of all, a question that had been haunting Naruto ever since he'd been given the top secret intel from the Mist… _why?_

In what had become known as the Fourth Secret Shinobi World War, Madara, along with Akatsuki and the Bijuu that he'd managed to collect, had waged what amounted the most epic of terrorist attacks on the hidden villages of the continent. One by one, with what came down to no more than three or four people and seven of the tailed demons, entire nations fell under their combined might. At first it was the smaller, less-influential countries and villages—Otogakure was quickly wiped off the map. Perhaps that was some sort of "take that" from Madara or Sasuke, but the almost-miniscule village was destroyed in a matter of hours. That wouldn't be quite such a problem if the village was a standard model… but in truth, it was scattered all over Rice Country. As a result, more than half of the land of the country had been devastated, nearly a full quarter of the population killed.

After them, others quickly dropped like flies… Grass, Rain, Waterfall, so many dead, so much destroyed. They operated as a highly-visible hit-and-run cell, the Mangekyou of both Uchiha controlling the Bijuu and commanding them to destroy, destroy, destroy… then, by the time anybody could arrive to help, they were gone, leaving nothing left behind.

After the minor villages had been ground to dust, the true horror began. At first, the most isolated of all of the villages—Kirigakure of Water Country, was targeted. From the reports of the survivors, the eight great demons appeared out of nowhere and destroyed the islands that made up the outer parts of the village, one by one.

Eventually, as the outer defenses fell, the village crumbled like wet cardboard. The Muzukage, to her credit, was at the front of the battle lines. For hours, she'd held off four of the Bijuu nearly single-handedly with her dual Kekkei Genkai, but it wasn't enough… eventually, even she fell to the power of the ancient horrors from hell.

From Kiri, they went on north to Lightening Country, the home of Kumogakure… the Cloud. There, they met the same fate as all those who'd gone before. Oh, sure… the Raikage and his brother put up an _excellent _fight, knocking out or taking out of commission five of the seven demons sent to destroy them. Truthfully, if Madara had shown himself, if he had gone and fought instead of sending in the Bijuu to do the dirty work for him, he might not have made it as far as he had. But Madara was, if nothing else, an extremely intelligent man, and intelligent men used the tools at hand most efficiently to get the most desired results.

The only remaining jinchūriki besides Naruto, Killer Bee, was forced to go on the run. Even he, with all his skill and bravado, was no match for the combined powers of his Bijuu's brethren. For years, he went into hiding, but was eventually found, captured, drained, and killed. But for he and Naruto, there was nothing left in the world to stop him from achieving his dream of reuniting the Bijuu into the Jibi…

That is… nothing except for his distant cousin… the only other Uchiha living in the world.

Sasuke, of course.

Later on, Sasuke had taken great pride in telling Naruto how he'd decided that he no longer needed Madara anymore. Madara, he said, was getting just a tad too… _ambitious. _With a slip of the tongue, he mentioned how he wondered what would happen if he replaced his own eternal Mangekyou with _another _eternal Mangekyou. It was at that moment that he knew that his elder could no longer be trusted. Soon after that… Madara Uchiha was no more.

For a time—almost five years, in fact—Sasuke had disappeared from the face of the earth. Try as every remaining shinobi could, there was no trace of the boy _or _the Bijuu. It seemed as if they no longer existed anymore, as if they had vanished into thin air.

Those five years were spent rebuilding their war-torn continent, of giving aid to those countries devastated by the demons. Truly, for the first time in a long time, Naruto realized just how dangerous the Bijuu were… and how justified some of the people who'd given him crap when he was a child just _might _have been.

The peace was short-lived, however. Just when it seemed that the remaining superpowers were able to put the continent back together in a somewhat reasonable state, Sasuke resurfaced, with all of the powers Madara had shown… and _more. _

The next several months were an exercise in tension. Killer Bee had disappeared from the face of the earth, when he'd been careful to only let Naruto and a few others know his location. When Sasuke had come back and offered proof that he'd captured the Hachibi and was in full control of the beast, every one of the remaining shinobi villages went on high alert. It was then that Naruto knew that the worst possible scenario that he'd been fretting over for years might come to pass.

He began researching everything he had on space/time jutsu in preparation for what might come. With the help of his closest friends and confidants, he explored possibilities and last-ditch scenarios. Finally, after months of effort, he finally came up with what might be the only thing that could possibly set the world right again… the seal array that had sent him back in time.

Now that Naruto had gone back to this era, he had a tough decision to make: should he use the knowledge he had of the future to his advantage, or let history play out as it would have? He knew that he'd already taken advantage of his future experiences by averting the Uchiha slaughter… but how much more beforehand knowledge was he ethically allowed to use?

In the end, he knew that whatever he chose to do would be defined by an incredible balancing act. He understood the principles of the butterfly effect, how one action of seeming innocuous consequence could have major ramifications that had no seeming connection. He knew that for him to act on some of this could cause more harm than good… but to _not _act would result in good people being very, _very _dead.

In the end, he found a good, solid middle ground.

He passed the buck onto the Uchiha.

After Naruto talked Itachi out of killing his clan and into betraying Madara, he decided to stay close to the Uchiha for a while. Only he and Itachi knew the truth, though there were many who wondered exactly why the young Jinchūriki was hanging out so much with the most influential clan in the village. Behind the scenes, Naruto was occasionally slipping Itachi bits of information—names, dates, locations, etc—based on his own experiences. Some of them were barely consequential, though others were vital. With this information and what amounted to the full might of the Uchiha, Naruto and Itachi did what he hadn't even thought of when he had traveled back into his past.

Uchiha Itachi, with intel provided by Naruto, found, fought, and killed the second-biggest threat to peace to come to the world in over a hundred years.

Orochimaru, the Snake Sannin, was dead. Killed by Itachi's genjutsu and sword.

Konoha, it was fair to say, had been in a _frenzy _Orochimaru's head had been carried through the streets by the Uchiha clan leader.

It had started when Itachi, along with a couple other Uchiha and one Hyuuga, had returned from what had formally an information-gathering venture into the southern edge of Rice country. But using information given to him by Naruto, Itachi had lead the team deeper into the territory than they had been ordered, the given reasoning being Itachi "thought he saw something" that none of the rest of his squad had picked up. The fact that the Hyuuga, with the Byakugan, hadn't questioned the head man of the Uchiha, spoke volumes.

They had found an underground hideout some two miles from the place that Itachi had given the deviation orders. Not being one to leave things to chance, Itachi had ordered the Hyuuga to scan the door with her doujutsu. With a start, she said that, among other people, _Orochimaru _of the _Sannin _was several levels below them. While giving them strict orders to stay and guard the entrance—and not to let anyone in _or _out besides him—he delved down into the bowels of the underground warren.

The Hyuuga narrated the succeeding events to her Uchiha partners: going room by room, Itachi found and slaughtered nearly every man and woman who didn't look like they weren't there against their will. Those who seemed to be prisoners or test subjects of some kind—namely, those who were hooked up to some kind of medical equipment—only they were spared.

Even though many of those inside the underground compound seemed to be shinobi, there was no chance for them to defeat the rampaging Uchiha. Even if Itachi had given them a chance to fight more than three or four at a time, he was far too skilled to fall under their combined weight.

Bloody bodies and severed limbs fell behind him as he tore a mad melee down, down, down though the cavernous subterranean building, until finally he reached the suite that housed Orochimaru himself. The Sannin met Itachi head on… but did exactly the _opposite _that _any _person who hoped to survive a confrontation with an Uchiha would do: he met Itachi's _eyes. _

That, the Hyuuga woman told her male compatriots, was the beginning of a very quick end. Orochimaru moved not an inch as Itachi's genjutsu was cast. The man himself casually crossed the room, drew his sword, and decapitated the bastard's head from his body with a single swing of the blade.

He incinerated the corpse with a fireball, but took the head as a prize and proof of the deed. There were too few people left in the compound to put up any kind of fight… and those who were left were now too terrified of the invader to do anything, anyway.

Orochimaru was dead.

All of his plans were out the window.

There was nothing of him left in the world.

Indeed… Naruto had been _busy._

The world he now knew was much different than the one he'd left. With the Uchiha, he'd managed to prematurely eliminate most of the major threats to peace that had come up in his career, or at the least alter events enough so that they couldn't escalate into the catastrophes he knew could happen. He knew that there would always be trouble somewhere in the world, but he'd come across his fare share, and had the knowledge to make it so that the trouble he knew could happen never did.

Though he never exited the boundaries of Konoha to act upon his future knowledge, he did, however, take it upon himself to, as he put it to Itachi soon after they met, "exterminate some rats from the ship." Over the course of a few months, he targeted two people who he knew for a fact to be traitors—Kabuto, Orochimaru's agent, and, though less of a threat, more of a personal vendetta, the sensei that had tried to kill him, Mizuki.

He'd taken care of both of them, and neither of them knew what hit them. Kabuto had been taken out with a wind-accelerated kunai from a distance one late night, while Mizuki had gotten a rather _nasty _surprise when he arrived home after classes one afternoon. Kabuto was a sick and twisted puppy, and it was better he be taken out sooner rather than later would make the world a better place. The things he'd seen the man do… it made him feel sick just thinking about it. And Mizuki…

The fact that Naruto hadn't been in class that day didn't raise any flags for anybody—of course, he already had a reputation of being a truant. When Mizuki didn't report in for class the next day, someone had been sent to check in on him. They found him, cut in half by his own Fuma shuriken, in a pool of blood on the floor. There were no leads on who his murderer could be; the forensics unit of the ANBU even was stumped. None of his neighbors could remember seeing anyone entering or leaving his apartment, or hear anything come from there. True, they were living in a village pretty heavily populated with professional _assassins, _but there was only a single entrance to his home.

"Naruto?" The blond looked up just in time to see the eraser smack him square on the forehead. A plume of chalk dust covered his entire upper body as the two classmates on either side of him dodged to the side. "What did I tell you about paying attention?"

Naruto cringed. He really thought that he was on top of it! He rubbed his forehead and grinned in chagrin. "Sorry, Iruka-sensei! I was just thinking about something else for a minute there!"

Iruka closed his eyes. From the size of the vein throbbing on his temple, Naruto knew that he had pushed his sensei to the breaking point… Ok, probably well _past_ it. "And what, if you please, could be more important than listening to me?"

Naruto fidgeted. Though he had another lifetime's experience dealing with people, and was considerably more skilled than Iruka, the man was still intimidating.

He played the role of nervous student to perfection. Though it was often fun to act as young as his body was, on occasion his antics came to bite him in the ass. "Umm…"

Iruka sighed. He was such a _bright _young boy. _Too_ bright, truth be told. There was no real need for him to even be in the Academy anymore. But for the moment, he was still the jinchūriki's sensei, and that brought along some… _privileges. _"Can it. You're staying behind to clean off all of the tables in the academy. _No _clones. Got it?"

Naruto sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I got it," he mumbled, though the corner of his mouth twitched. "I'll be done in no time. _Believe _it."

* * *

Iruka was rubbing the bridge of his nose as he walked into the staff break room after classes were over for the day. On days like this, with Naruto giving him trouble, a headache was sure to come. Sure enough, at final bell, the inkling of a migraine slipped in and invaded his brain. By the time he was able to get to the relative sanctuary of the break room, a pinching at the front of his skull was torturing him mercilessly.

"Hey, Iruka-sempai!" another Chuunin called from the couch on the left wall. "Fresh pot's on the burner, just made it."

Iruka nodded his appreciation. "Thanks, Chakie-chan," he said. The kunoichi taught the class three years behind his own, and got along much better with her own students than he did his. "I need this."

The red-haired woman chuckled. "I can believe it. Let me guess—the Uzumaki boy again, right?"

Iruka rolled his eyes as he grabbed a mug and poured the brew. "Of course. What else? Every time, it's the same damn thing—Naruto goofs off, makes a scene, pulls the other boys into his antics, even Sasuke! I swear, it's like he doesn't even want to be here half the time!" He sat beside the woman with a huff. "Sometimes, I don't even know what _I'm _doing here anymore."

Chakie sipped gingerly from her cup. "What _are _you doing here, Iruka?" she asked. "I've seen your file. You're strong enough, and certainly _skilled _enough, to be a Jounin. Why don't you ever take the tests?"

Iruka sighed and took in the warmth from his mug. "I would," he said, "but I didn't want to leave my students before they graduated. If Mizuki was still here, I might have, but—well, you know what happened to him." Chakie nodded, so he continued. "The thing is, I probably wouldn't have any problem passing the tests. I'd probably go into the private tutor Tokubetsu rank, but all that means is I'd be teaching some clan kids the basics, and maybe some of the intermediates. I wouldn't be much good out there. In here," he continued, idly sweeping a hand around, "I can reach the most kids the most quickly. I'm not ambitious, and I know where I belong. It's just—"

"You wish it wasn't so annoying?"

Iruka nodded. "That's just it—it's not _that bad. _I just hate it when Naruto acts out like that. He needs to grow up, and no matter how much I try to help him, he just brushes me off. It's like I don't even matter to him."

"Well," Chakie said in a diplomatic tone, "he _does _kind of have some advantages over the rest of his classmates, doesn't he? He's the jinchūriki, he hangs out with the Uchiha boy at his home, and it seems he's the personal apprentice of Itachi himself, for some odd reason. All told…"

Iruka sighed. "I know, I know," he said. "He's _good. _From what I've seen, he's as strong as almost every Chuunin in the village—hell, I wouldn't put it past him to be able to take down some of the newer Jounin. That Uchiha boy, Sasuke, is almost as strong." He closed his eyes and leaned back in the couch. "Itachi trains them _both _relentlessly in the practical arts when he goes over, from what I've heard. If those two get put on the same team come graduation…" He shook his head and snorted. "Life would be pretty interesting, I would think."

She turned to him, deadpan. "Interesting? That would be a disaster! They'd never get a single D-class mission done!"

Iruka had to chuckle. "You're probably right. Luckily, that's not how teams are made. It is extremely unlikely that they would be put on the same team even with luck on their side."

"You don't have anything to do with the assignments, do you?" Chakie asked.

Iruka shook his head. "Nope. Out of my department. A special council with the Hokage himself will be convened the day of graduation; they're the ones who decide who goes where, not me." He took a sip of his coffee. "And all the power to them. I don't want to be the one who decides who goes where. Can you imagine deciding that?"

Chakie smiled. "Imagine? I shudder in fear to think of where our little Konohamaru's going to end up. Grandson of the Sandaime… something of a little brother to Naruto, if I interpret their interactions right… Whoever is _his _sensei had better prepare for some headaches." She hummed. "Maybe I should make a note of that in his file…"

Iruka laughed good-naturedly. "Maybe," he agreed. "But that's not for us to worry about—not yet, anyway. One step at a time, Chakie-chan. One at a time."

* * *

_Two hundred thirteen… two hundred fourteen… two hundred fifteen… _Naruto grunted with the effort of the one-armed pull-ups he pushed his body toward. _Ugh, how the hell does Lee do this crap every day? They call _me _a stamina freak! _Finally ready to take a break, he dropped the foot's distance to the ground and flexed his shoulder.

He'd long left that hole of an apartment he had grown up in. Though he held some fond memories from his first childhood there, in retrospect he couldn't fathom why he didn't leave it sooner. With some funds from the Uchiha clan, he was able to snag a place in a nicer part of town with quadruple the floor space. He'd gotten some friction initially from some of the people who'd already lived in the building, but he had kept to himself and had turned out to be the model neighbor. Recently, many had even grown fond of the boy, and several of the families, military and civilian alike, had come to see him as a kind of extended family himself. Of course, his connections with the Uchiha didn't hurt his reputation any. Everyone knew that Uchiha Itachi held him in high regard by then, so it wouldn't do to get on his bad side.

He found himself, in the three years since his personal reboot, looking at the world through quite different eyes. Though many things had remained the same, much had changed. Through nudging the world in his own ways to eliminate the biggest threats he'd known, he'd created a power vacuum that some had only been too willing to fill. One of the biggest moral quandaries he'd had was what to do about the ones who he'd never run across. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he was no god, and had no choice but to let this world's history run its course. In time, when it came to it, he would do what he could to take care of them. Until then… he had his own life to worry about.

The one biggest worry he had to concern himself with was what he would do about the man called Pain, originally called Nagato. That was, he was forced to admit, something of a humdinger. On the one hand, he was a living monster with delusions of grandeur. He'd managed to take over a hidden village, kill its leader, and style himself as a god.

On the other… from what he'd learned as Hokage, Hanzo had coming what he got. Danzo had tried to get him to comply with a coup and overthrow Sarutobi, and in truth it was Hanzo's fault that the being called Pain came into being. The implications of interfering with that course of events were dicey at best. All told, it would be for the best to deal with him when the time came. The strange ability he had to befriend almost anyone and turn them to his point of view astounded even him at times. He was sure it would work with Nagato a second time, if it ever came to that.

As for the rest of the Akatsuki…

He grinned malevolently as he sat down with crossed legs. Well, save for Konan, not a one of them were worth the dirt on their graves.

Time well, well spent.

But now that he'd accomplished what he'd set out to do, what, exactly, was there to do?

"Perhaps I can be of some assistance."

Naruto yelped and fell backwards to the floor in shock. He looked up to see the smiling face of none other than the time lord himself, the being styling himself as "Winston." "What the hell?" Naruto screamed aloud. "You almost gave me a heart attack!"

Winston skipped nimbly backwards as Naruto leapt to his feet. "Oh, I highly doubt that, young Naruto. You're made of much sterner stuff than that."

Naruto scowled. "Yeah, yeah," he growled. "Now, what do you want? After three years, I thought I'd never see you again! What gives?"

Winston smiled that infuriating smile of his. "Why, Naruto, I expected a warmer welcome from such an old friend such as you! Where's the warmth?"

Naruto stared deadpan at the apparition. "You're kidding, right?" he said. "Every time you show up, I get a headache! What do you want this time?"

Winston folded his hands of his cane's knob. "Want? Oh, I want for nothing, young Naruto. I just would like to congratulate you on all that you've accomplished in these last few years. Why, in this brief time, you've used what you know to good use. Every foe you've had is gone from this world, every enemy who's posed a threat is neutralized. You have in place plans for the future events that have not yet come to pass. Should worse come to worse, you have the tools to save the world. You should be exceedingly proud of yourself."

Naruto put himself on guard. "And so?" he asked.

Winston smiled. "Well, I do have to ask you… _now _what are you going to do?"

Naruto frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," Winston said with a wave of his hand, "you've already had a taste of power. You broke the rules and went back through time to change the world. I just want to know if you're satisfied leaving it here."

Naruto looked at Winston suspiciously. "I don't follow," he said. "I've got a lot of irons in the fire right now. I'm using the knowledge I attained from my other life to make this world a better place. I'm thankful that you gave me another chance at this, but… what else is there?"

Winston cocked his head and grabbed the brim of his top hat gingerly between his fingers. "Hmm… would you like to find out?" he said with a smile.

"Uh-uh," Naruto said, shaking his head. "Not gonna let you play this game. Either tell me what you want, or leave me be. I've got too good a life here without you getting in my business."

The man in black laughed and gently tapped the bottom of his cane on the floor. "That's the spirit! Always questioning, never taking things at face value… suspicious lad, aren't you?"

Naruto glowered at the man. "It's an acquired trait," he said. "Anyway, really now—what do you want?"

"Oh, nothing much," Winston said idly. "Just would like to introduce you to some friends of mine… people like you, time travelers. Thought you could learn a thing or two from them before your next great adventure."

The boy frowned. "Next adventure? The hell?"

Winston grinned. "You didn't think I was _done _with you, did you?"

"What do you mean?"

Winston rubbed his hands together gleefully. "I would like you to meet some friends of mine," he said, "followers of mine, if you will, those who have also bent time and space for their own purposes. Hopefully, they will be able to give you some insight."

"Followers?"

"Yes. Naruto…" Winston held out his hand to the boy. "I'd like to introduce you to the Prince, the Hero, the Professor, and the lonely Wandering God."

Naruto hesitantly looked at Winston… then took his hand in his own. The world went black once again.

* * *

A/N: Yeah, it's gonna get pretty interesting from here on in! Bonus points if you can figure out who the Prince, Hero, Professor, and Wandering God are!


End file.
